Family Pictures

It's been almost 4 years since we did family pictures or ANY professional pictures, for that matter. I decided it was time.

For the record, I dread the stress of family pictures. Shopping is VERY limited where I live so there's always the annoyance of having to drive an hour to find a decent mall and schlep through every store looking for the perfect outfits. Then there is the struggle of figuring out how to keep the kids clean and wrinkle free on the ride to get photos done (because again, we don't have any reasonably priced studio near us so we have drive an hour). Finally, there is the sweat that goes into performing for the children so they actually smile naturally and not with a cheesy grin. It was SO much easier when they were babies! They just always smiled!

I have to say that this time around, it was pretty darn easy. I forgot my kids are 10 and 6 (when did that happen). That's a whole lot better than 7 and 4 which is how old they were the last time we did this. I didn't have to jump around this time to get them to smile, they just did it. The biggest concern while there was praying Connor's front teeth stayed put and didn't fall out. They are not long for this world.

I had talked with the woman at the studio about things I wanted and didn't want:

No cheesy poses (no heads on each other's shoulders, lying on the floor with our heads together, arm on knee in the football pose)

No props (no sports balls, no fishing rods, no sitting on docks)

No FULL-BODY SHOTS ( I like my pictures close up)

(I guess that was a whole lot of "didn't want")

I repeated these requests to the actual photgrapher when we got there.

Guess what we got?

We got a lot of cheesy shots and a ton full-body shots.

I was able to find one individual and one together shot of the boys that I liked that was close-up, but none of the family....which really bummed me out.

Mike must have sensed my sadness at not getting a decent shot of the family on the way home (did I mention it's an long ride home?) because he "had a plan" and his plan was to have them redone.

I know, he's pretty great. And he's mine.

So, we did! We dressed up in our finest for the second time in a week, made the trek up north, and took the family pictures over.

The results......

I thought they came out much better.

I bought the CD with all the pictures on it for $150. That means I own the rights to them. I already sent 12 8x10's off to Walmart and paid $26. I am so excited to be able to print as many as I want, as many times as I want, for whoever wants one (or two or five).

And a huge bonus....my Christmas pictures are done! WOO WOO! I just have to pick out a template I like, plug in my favorites from the shoot, and order them from whatever store I want. I am loving this "owning the rights" thing.

Have a great weekend!

Crank up the music and enjoy Fireflies (Owl City). The guy is from my town. When went to Playlist to put a new song on my blog, his songs were the most popular searches. Pretty cool. My kids love this song.