When my sister’s family was planning their move into a new house in DeWitt for this spring, I started to think about my own family’s move when I was two years old. I have a few very faint memories of that first house, and I always wished I had more family photos to see how my family lived when I was a baby and toddler.
Around the same time that I started thinking about this, I did a family photo swap with another photographer in the area. That inspired me to take family photos with my sister’s family around their house so that my two and four year old nephews could look back and see how they interacted together around the “old” house (I’ll post those photos soon—stay tuned). After the shoot, I asked my sister if she knew anyone else who would be moving soon who might want family photos to remember their house (my sister’s an awesome realtor in Lansing—shameless plug if anyone’s looking to move). She put me in touch with Dottie. Dottie, Matt and their daughter, Lola, will be moving to the St. Louis area later this summer. They’ve been in their house for five years. They renovated it, decorated it, turned the house into a home and brought their daughter home to this place two years ago. I love that I had a chance to capture them in their first family home, and I hope that these photos make Lola smile twenty years from now when she’s wondering what life was like in those early days before the family moved.