In May of 2006, I had just purchased a new digital camera, and had recently finished a photography class at BYU. I would often visit Grandma, usually to run little errands, or to borrow the Cadillac when our old Pathfinder needed repairs, or just to check on her and see how she was doing. I forget now why I was there, but on one of these visits, I was excited to test out my new camera, so I took a bunch of pictures of that wonderful house, thinking that maybe I’d put them together in a kind of photo-essay sometime. But, I was still learning how to use the camera, so many didn’t turn out, and the project was forgotten.

I recently stumbled across the files from that day on my hard drive, and thought I should send them out to my family. Every detail of this house triggers memories for me—memories of Grandma, of Grandpa, of trying to count how many holes are in each ceiling tile as I fell asleep (293), and of the sound of aunts, uncles, and cousins coming in through the front door.

Christmas, 2011