Oooo boy my mother is going to be maaaaad

When I started researching Field's history, I figured, hey, I probably have a ton of photos of Field's. Definitely of the Walnut Room Christmas tree.

My family -- well, my three adorable nieces, my darling mother, my lovely sister and I -- have been going to the Walnut Room for at least 10 years now. Like everyone else, we wait around forever (well, unless my mother does the saintly thing and goes early to get us one of those buzzer things). One year we arrived around lunch hour and waited so long the girls resorted to stuffing themselves on potato chips and it was probably closer to 4 when we finally sat down for "lunch." The next year, we arrived so early we got seated at something like 10 a.m. These things just cannot be coordinated.

Nope. Two hours of digging through boxes of photos turned up exactly one out of focus photograph that doesn't include me:
My mother (who will hate me because she hates seeing photos of herself but I think she looks great) and my darling niece Annie.

Blurry? Check. No visuals of the background? Check. So tightly cropped it could be in any restaurant and we can only tell it's the Walnut Room because of the date marked stamped on it? Check check check.

Why is it that I take tons of photos of things I never want to look at in the future -- acquaintances from high school who happened to be at the graduation ceremony, buildings at college that I can no longer even recall what went on in them, every unflattering Halloween costume ever worn -- but the things that now really form cherished memories some elude photographic immortalization?

But these great traditions that we look forward to every year? Not nearly enough photos.

So, goal for the future: Take more photos. Of the things that really matter.