Family Photos

Oy - why do we put ourselves through this every year?  Oh yeah - because we want a recent family photo to share with everyone.

The first 7 years of my and hubby's relationship - we never once had a professional photo taken of the two of us.  Ok - not true - we had a bad one taken at a wedding in 2004...it was never printed or displayed for good reason.  We had often talked about it though..and settled for self portraits instead.   Then, when we had the Doodle and Buggie - we knew part of being parents was providing grandparents with a nice photo to show off and display.  

That first year, we headed off to Kids Photo in Market Mall.  What a disaster!  I had asked for an hour long appointment and was told that the shots I was looking for could be done in half an hour.  They couldn't.  A half hour wasn't long enough to get my 4 month old babies comfortable with the photographer and to get ANY of the shots I wanted.  And we had to pay a ridiculous amount for what we did get.  Lesson learned.   The photo that year was cute, but there were no smiles on the faces of the babies.  Just stunned fear.

For the girls first birthday, hubby and I decided it would be nice to get one taken of the two of them together and then some individual shots.  To save money (and in case the session went horribly wrong), we just booked it at Sears.  It was perfect.  The girls had fun crawling around and mugging for the camera.  I love the shots we got that day.  We even made sure to get the DVD so we could have them all!

Following that success, when it was time to get our fall portrait taken - we went to Sears again.  The girls would have nothing of it.  It was hot and uncomfortable int eh studio and they just wanted to play with the toys and refused to look at the camera.  We got one family shot where they looked up...and it is awkward because of their hands flailing in the air. Oh - and I have purple hair in the pictures, too, because they needed to be taken just before we went to San Fran. (I don't have that one scanned yet)

After that one - I was working on my own brain to just believe that our family picture is just a quick snapshot of us at that one point in time - where we are all together and some effort is taken to look nice.   It will always be replaced the next year.

I am going to need to remind myself of that promise every day for the next year.

Last Sunday, we got our new portraits taken.  Um.  Yeah.   Not good.  I even bribed the girls with lip gloss for smiles.  Once we were in the Sears studio - all bets were off and the freak out began.   Luckily, the session didn't cost us a thing because we "won" a free sitting and 10x13 portrait.  And we did get one nice family shot...if we could just swap my head out of it.  The girls are looking and smiling.  Hubby is looking and smiling.  Me?  Well, I must have been caught mid laugh or something.  I look like a horse.   It's not pretty.  

But I only need to look at it every time I walk down the hall for the next year, right?

After the photos - we got coffees and went to Confederation Park to see if we could get some nice shots of the girls among the fall colours. Hubby captured this one that I LOVE!  

This was before they spilled hot chocolate down the front of those expensive little dresses Gramma bought them...