Its that time of year again, and when November hit I was in near panic that we had yet to take a family picture and there were not many weekends left available for the undertaking. So TODAY WAS THE DAY. I decided so yesterday, which was nice since I only had 24 hours to lose sleep over it.The time-honored traditional family portrait is an exhaustingly-wonderful-exhaustingly-unpredictable-and-exhaustingly-laughable undertaking. I know from my days as a Bugos girl, the longer we planned for the family portrait session, the more opportunity certian little people had to aquire large strawberry-red-scabby injuries on their HEADS, so in that light, as a mother of boys, springing portrait day on the boys without much notice is A GOOD THING.
This year there is added pressure since my open for business sign went up as a pro-photog. I had to resign myself to the fact that my Christmas card does not have to be an AD, but certainly it can't be bad either. Of course, to preserve my reputation as a photographer, I also can't just head over to Sears or Picture People for a studio shot. No, no sir. I have to take MY family photo myself. And NO, I can't ask someone to press the button for me because STUBBORN little VAIN me has to get the credit for snapping the shot. The only thing in hindsight that I would have done differently would have been to hire a CLOWN to follow us around to make the kids at least look forward, if not maybe even crack a smile:) Or I guess if nothing else we are going to have to bribe a cousin or two to come and wear silly hats and dance like mad-men to get our boys' attention:)
So that self-inflicted pressure is why I found myself hauling *** back and forth from self-timing-tripod-stationed-camera and back to my family of two hilariously uncooperative little munckins and a daddy who couldn't do a whole lot more than just smile for a 100 photos. Did I mention that the perfect beach-side-overlooking-the-cliffs-city-skyline-background was on a slight incline??? (Hey- there are NOT a whole lot of locations this good in Corpus!) By shot number 10 I was feeling the burn, by shot 30 I was jello. And then we hit the stairs! Shortly into the process Donovan decided that he wanted to join mom in her race to reset the camera timer and so not only was I running back to get myself in position, I was RACING Donovan back to were Joe & Avery sat, then had to tackle Donovan in order to stop him from running past us, then flip him around and into his position, pull the hair out of my face and fake a pleasant smile- say a prayer that the kids were smiling too.....just in time for the shutter to click. And did I mention that despite the bliss of gaining an our of sleep today when we set our clocks back, me and my blondness didn't factor that into the sun setting and hour earlier so we were really under the gun to maintain good lighting! Lol!!!!
We stayed in the same park but chose three different locations to take the picture. I knew that if we got one good shot out of a 100 we would be doing good. Avery is TOTALLY not into having his picture taken, and even LESS into sitting still while his paparrazzi mom gets shutter-happy. Donovan is getting to the age where he is finally somewhat willing to occasionally follow instructions. Avery meanwhile is just emerging into the fun toddler phase called "a year of opposite days." So that is why the ONLY picture he is smiling for is the one where an airplane happend to fly overhead.
So we made it. And after numerous outtakes (some pictured here!!) we have our Christmas card shot. Its not perfect, but perhaps the imperfections are what make is so perfect- since it truly captures our family in all of our goofy chaotic glory! I really need to learn how to successfully Photoshop entire HEADS from one pic to another....if I could just do digital plastic surgery after the fact, I would get the money-shot every time:)
I have decided that next year instead of just snapping that prize photo we will also have to videotape the process, as it would be quite entertianing, and maybe even award winning for all its unscripted hilarity. 
