Family Pictures

It's picture time once again. I'm not sure who decided that the cool November air was best for pictures but it is becoming a family tradition. For the most part it seems to be crunch time for Christmas cards and we try to send our family picture at the same time. It is supposed to make things more convenient but sometimes I wonder about our thinking on the matter.

There is something about having 4 wonderful boys and trying to take family pictures. We've found that our boys are quite wonderful and ahead of the average in just about every way. In fact, each boy only has about a 25% chance of acting up during an entire photo shoot! The problem is that there is a 95% chance that each boy's 25% chance of acting up will happen sequentially and not simultaneously.

See, if it was simultaneous we would have a few moments of chaos and anarchy followed by nearly 2 hours of peace, happiness and amazing pictures. This, however, is definitely not the case this time. Each boy wanted their own moment is the agony spotlight of our photo shoot. Check it out...

First Donovan can't find his smile. I know it's there but it is definitely turned upside down. And who can blame Aleky for bugging out when the happy talk to Donovan begins. I mean, come on! There are places to explore and trouble to be found. Why wait for an uncooperative smile? Just what is a kid supposed to do? Michael decided to go fishing...for sticks. That looked like fun so David decided to play too. After an extensive explanation of all the reason it was in Donovan's best interest to smile for the picture we had success!

While the happiness of our success consumed us we moved on to a new location. Next it was the leaves! How do you convince young boys not to play in the leaves while taking family pictures? We couldn't figure it out but if anyone has suggestions please let us know!

We wanted to try and get a few more pictures so that we could choose the absolute best picture possible. But I tell you what...children reach a point and then they are done and there is nothing you can do about it. Although we tried everything we could think of to keep the interested.

Let's face, kids just aren't very excited about sitting around and smiling! To them...what's the point?

David dropped out of the happiness race...literally!

Even Aleky was finally done with it all. He wanted to explore this new terrain! So the smiles left and the running and exploring finally began.

Michael did the best of the 4 boys. While he wasn't perfect he was comparatively an angel.

So there you have it. A simple photo shoot turned wild but we managed to find out happy family somewhere in the middle!

With the boys distracted by exploring and playing in the fields and leaves we took a quick moment to get our own couple pictures. It seemed too easy to get us together and smiling at the same time...moving an arm or hand or head without complaint!

I have to say that of all the amazing women in the world I found the most amazing one of all. Michelle has so many amazing qualities that it takes 5 boys just to try and equal 1 Michelle. She has amazing ideas and insight. I just don't know what I would do without her! I love her with all my heart.

And while the sunset was very romantic we didn't really get to enjoy it like we should have. The pictures didn't turn out (they need light or something like that). The boys had to be collected up and returned to the car. It was getting cold and our amazing photographer, Stacy Phipps, had children to feed. But it is still a wonderful memory for our family.

Thank you to Uncle Kyle for helping to watch all of the children and trying to get them to smile. And thank you to Stacy for taking time out of her busy day to take the pictures. They are wonderful!