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My husband and I like us. We're our biggest fans. Before our dogs and babies, we had pictures of the two of us all over the house. I don’t have one wedding album, I have seven.

It really has nothing to do with liking the way I look. Nine times out of 10, I wake up, look in the mirror, and wonder how I'm going to make something out of the mess I see. It has more to do with liking the way pictures make me feel. At a glance, I'm transported back to a moment or an event. I'm reminded of what it felt like to be at that stage in my life.

For instance, this picture is from our third-anniversary trip to Italy.

I remember buying that scarf on the street in Florence since I was chilly and hadn’t brought one. I remember there was an iPod in my pocket that my husband had engraved with our song title, and I lost it on a train between Pisa and Naples. I remember we were just a block away from a little wine bar overlooking the ocean in Riomaggiore when we said we wanted to return there for our 10th anniversary to renew our vows. That was seven years ago this month.

Once our four-legged babies came into our lives, the pictures changed. I have baby books for my dogs just like my kids (don’t judge).

I can vividly remember living in Pacific Grove, California and taking our 6-month-old bull dog, Pumpkin, to the beach in Carmel. My husband always says that was the moment when I scarred her for life. She wasn’t a fan of the waves. She ran from the ocean for years after this picture! She liked water, but only on her terms. I can tell you exactly where I bought that skirt. It was my first size 4 in years (I was always a size 6, 8, or 10), and I got it at a boutique in Malibu. I got that hat when my little brother came to visit (a rarity), and we went to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. That was nine years ago.

This one was taken for a magazine article I was in when I was an anchor in Las Vegas.

It was the hottest day of the spring—well over 100 degrees—and we had just adopted our big boy, Gourdie, hours before. We were at a park by our first house together, and we brought a cooler of ice water so the dogs wouldn’t pass out. I'm wearing one of my favorite tops ever. It was the most expensive piece of clothing I had ever owned aside from my wedding dress. I wore it in a low-budget thriller movie I was in when I was 22. Still to this day, I have that top. That was eight years ago.

With the arrival of human children, the game changed. We joke that we have the most photographed children on earth. Obviously, you're familiar if you've seen any of my previous blogs or you're a fan on Facebook. I post pictures of them daily. I just can’t stop. They're the most beautiful things I've ever seen. They grow up so fast and I don’t want to miss a second. I'm a trained videographer from my days as a broadcast journalist, so I started shooting not only pictures, but videos. I would take all the hundreds of pictures and hours of film and make a new video of each of my girls every three months. Here's one of those from when Grace was 1 years old.

My husband owns a production company, so I was blessed with some great cameras to use, including the Canon 7D, (E221745) which changed the way I took pictures and shot video. The girls love to watch their videos and we play them weekly. I cry every time. Each shot is a memory. My heart feels like it's going to explode with gratitude for the joy they've brought me over the last two years.

With their arrival, I decided to trust the pros for pictures every year, too, and I started scouring websites for inexpensive photography deals every summer. Now, the walls of our new home are covered with these professional 8x10s—pictures of our family from the girls’ births to just last summer.

This one from two summers ago is one of my favorites.

We're on my in-laws' boat in San Diego, which is truly one of our happiest places on Earth. I was still feeling some leftover baby weight and didn’t like anything in my closet, so I ran out hours before and got this little dress for $15 at a boutique down the street from my house. The girls are wearing dresses that cost more than most of my clothes (compliments of their generous grandmother), and I remember going back into their closets weeks later and crying because these darling little dresses didn’t fit anymore and my babies were growing so fast. Even over a year later, Georgia still asks for the "barco" (boat in Spanish) behind us. That picture is happiness.

I carry wallet-sized pictures like these in my purse, I have copies in my locker at work, and I have them scrolling across my computer as a screensaver. I just love the way I feel when I see a memory frozen in time. This is the first place I've ever worked that gets that. I loved our winter advertising pictures because they featured that cute little English bulldog, but these spring prints are even better. I can truly feel the sun, the air, and the family. The first time I saw these during a show, I actually gasped a bit. I felt like it was my family.  

The colors, the kids, the dresses! (A220649)

This one is my absolute favorite.

I see my girls in that child. This is what I want to do with my babies as they grow up. Sit, relax, dress up, and just be through every stage of their lives. Even the look in both of the models' faces, the twinkle in the little girl's eyes, and the mom that looks tired, but happy, and so, so beautiful. I pray I can look that gorgeous when my girls are that age. And, of course, this one.

Sure, that's a French bulldog in the picture, but as a mother of two English bulldogs, I still love the smooshy faces. As my husband says, those breeds all ran into the same wall. I adore this picture for the simple fact that I love that Cynthia Vincent dress (A222832) and I aspire to have pictures of me look this darn good.  

Okay, so maybe part of the reason why the hubby and I love pictures of us so much is because they're also a way to edit reality. Admit it, you only keep the good pictures and you only print out the really good pictures. In the pictures of me and my family on my walls, that girl isn’t having a bad-hair day, doesn’t have a pimple on her chin, and she happened to walk into perfect lighting. The babies don’t have spit up all over and the dogs are clean. You know when a professional QVC photographer took this spring photo, it took that model 15 tries to get her feet in the right spot, but it looks like we're catching her in a rare moment of pure joy.

I hope she keeps this photo and it makes her smile 7, 9, 12 years from now. My reality is pretty near perfect these days, but it wasn’t always. And just in case there are too many gray clouds in my life one day, I have pictures to prove that the sunshine was there and it'll be back.

—Kerstin Lindquist