Family pictures

Every November we take family pictures to send out with our Christmas cards. This year I sent my cards out early with a picture of my kids. Generally, I like family pictures better, but the children's pictures were so cute, I decided that this year I could live without the family picture. However, my mom has been pleading for current pictures of the families of all her kids so she can frame them for her wall, so despite not really needing a family picture this year, I knew we had to do it.

Usually we are too cheap to have any professional to take our pictures so we do it ourselves. Every few years we invite friends to come with us so we can switch off- they can take ours and we can take theirs. But that usually takes so long that you end up going crazy, or losing the light, or having a kid throw a tantrum. So most of the time we just take a tripod and do it ourselves.

I don't know how most families are about getting pictures, but ours seems to be pretty difficult. I hate to give most of the blame to Lily, but she is the hardest person to get a good photo of. We have to take literally hundreds of photos to get one good one of her. She is always looking down, drooling, yawning, floppy, or throwing her hands around. Don't get me wrong, I don't get mad at her because I know she can't help it, but it is very distracting for everyone else. We are all talking to her, tickling her, wiping her mouth, readjusting her just to get her to look up by the time the timer goes click, but then we all end up being contorted.

We don't have a remote to the camera, so Paul runs back and forth sweating and running out of patience. He is always willing to take pictures, but I think he would prefer to pull his own teeth out with a pair of pliers, so that underlying tension is always there.

Siena tries hard to help, but usually ends up getting in an argument with Paul. Spencer is at the stage of cheesy smiles and playing around- which he then gets yelled at for not staying still.

I am juggling everyone's attitudes and trying to keep the peace, organizing where everyone should be, yelling at everyone to stay calm and smiling, making sure Lily's head is up and that my double chin is not showing. We are all worn out by the time Paul refuses to take another shot, but I'm still begging for more.

It is a good thing Paul knows how to photoshop anything, otherwise, you would know the real us! Every year he ends up having to switch heads on at least one of us. However, this year despite the switching of heads, it still isn't that great. But you get what you get and you don't throw a fit! At least no one got killed.

Which reminds me of when I was little. We were about to get our family picture taken when one of our dogs got run over. Is that right, Mom? Or did a hamster get squeezed to death? I can't remember exactly, but we were all bawling our eyes out. You can see in the picture that we all had red eyes, but I think we faked the smiles pretty well.

Now you see the real us. Here are a few of the 124 taken.