THANKFUL 2023

It’s here! It’s here! Between cooking and editing and welcoming home all my chickens and navigating technical issues and life … I’ve just finished creating my FAVORITE slideshow of the year – the annual Thankful Video. I like to imagine that there are people out there who look forward to this every year (HELLLOOOOO, my people!) and that they’re as excited as I am about its annual appearance.

This video is the FOURTEENTH of its kind. And while certainly things have changed over the years, I really think there’s something about the videos that remains a constant — I mean, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the compilation I make every year just OOZES love, fun and gratitude. My families invite me in to do photos because they recognize these things as the best parts of their lives as a family, and I get to be the one to capture them and make them into something permanent that can be kept and shared with all our future selves.

I hope that when you watch it, you feel my gratitude for the joy and honor doing this job for you all brings me. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all of you who make it possible. (And to all of you who cheer from the sidelines, too!)

The old song from that first video over a decade ago is back – “You’re So Beautiful” by Pat McGuire inspired my tagline and the name of my favorite Storybook Album. The slideshows I now deliver to every family have a newer (equally awesome) soundtrack, but I love to come back to this song as a throwback to the feeling this song brought me back when this little business was barely a twinkle in my eye. While there are really only a few lyrics that really get to the heart of why I do what I do, those few lyrics are EVERYTHING –

I want you to picture me in the kitchen of my house on Iden Avenue in the early 2000s. I’ve got a toddler on my hip and there are multiple preschoolers at my feet – we’re all dancing around the kitchen with this song at full blast. This song was part of a playlist I used to get through that late afternoon witching hour. And THAT LINE got me every time — that feeling that as crazy and hard as these days and moments were, I knew they’d be gone in a flash and I desperately wanted to remember every one.

“Wherever time may take you

in your life,

remember this was beautiful.”

That feeling is, to this day, why I love doing what I do.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families!

Thanks for looking,

Jaye

PS. You KNOW you want to go back and watch the old videos — last year’s is HERE and you can make your way back from there if you like.