Family Photos

When Doug and Isabel were in town, Isabel told me that one day they were going to take family photos so I piled on. I love having a photo of our family, but the process of getting that done is pretty painful so we avoid them most years. My theory about family photos is that Satan is hard at work to make them not happen and he is so happy when we all get mad and impatient with each other.

Anyway, Isabel and Nicole went and scoped out a couple good spots, I pulled out some clothes from everyone's closet that I thought would coordinate, and when Isabel said it was time to go we followed them out the door and down the street. It's so nice to have someone else direct the show and all I have to do is follow along.

We definitely had some moments on our picture taking outing, but it turned out to be not so bad. It really helped to have fun cousins and a superstar aunt and uncle to help lighten the mood and keep spirits high.

Anyway, here are some of my favorites. There's lots of them but I like so many of them for different reasons.

Love the way she's looking up at her dad here.

And this one would have been great if we would have thought to have Leah take off her glasses. I love that Meg is holding my hand.

This one reminds me that Leah decided to stop smiling.

Then she got mad. See what I mean about Satan being hard at work?

She finally decided to just remove herself from the process altogether. These two didn't seem to mind.

But Leah finally came back for the full family photo part. Then Isabel made us laugh and Meg thought it would be a good idea to attack me. That kid is always hanging on me.

 Leah started having fun when we told her she could climb a tree. She was having a little trouble so Brita gave her a boost.

These two have been darling together lately and they are certainly darling in this photo. I think this one is my very favorite of the whole bunch.

I gently persuaded Leah to come down from the tree for a minute.

But then she quickly found another tree to climb. And I almost lost my breath because she was so pretty.

Leah's tree photo was so cute, so I asked Brita to get in the tree too. She was agreeable to anything I asked her to do. She can be the sweetest. And she's stunning.

And this one might have been a busy monkey, but she's so squeezably adorable. Why do I want to eat children when they are so cute like that? I'm pretty sure she wouldn't taste good but it seems like she should.

Jared took every opportunity to throw the frisbee or do anything active in between poses. He doesn't sit still well. Leah is very much her father's daughter.

It looked like Leah and Jared were having so much fun, that we all decided to try it. The rest of us didn't seem to have the same finesse for sliding down the railings.

We took what seemed like hundreds and maybe even thousands of pictures that day. This is the one we ended up going with for our Christmas card and I love it. I love it because it looks like Jared has a shoulder angel and I love it mostly because it's my family.

These are the people I invest myself in every single day. Sometimes it takes every ounce of everything I've got, and sometimes I don't do it well, but I'm sticking with them because these are my people. I sure love being a wife and mom. Life is good and now I've got the pictures to prove it.