Saturday, December 27, 2014

Family Christmas pictures: The struggle is real

When we first moved into this house two years ago I came up with a mental list of places around the house where we could take our annual Christmas picture.  In 2012 we all wore pajamas and sat in our bed.  In 2013 we sat in front of the fireplace with the stockings hanging behind us.  Other places on my list include in front of the front door after it has been painted red, on the bench on the front patio with a huge wreath hanging on the window behind us, and on the diving board.  Well, our door is still not red, we can't afford a huge $150 wreath and our children/dog can not be trusted to not push/pull all of us in the pool if we attempt the diving board.  So, I decided the best thing for this year was to sit on our front steps and incorporate some of our festive outdoor decor.

I took some practice pictures to make sure the lighting and the cropping would work.

A human subject was needed.

And now with a tiny human subject.
John and Maryellen were kind enough to come over on a Sunday morning in early December to help us out.  John took the pictures and Maryellen stood behind him playing maracas and jingle bells to keep the attention of the wee ones and the canine one.
Do you have any idea how nearly impossible it is to get a decent picture with two kids and a dog?  I think NASA has an easier time sending satellites into far off galaxies.

We'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.







I think this is my favorite of the NO's.





We almost went with this one.







But I knew we could do better so we rallied one last time and got this gem.

Official.  Christmas 2014.

2 comments:

Sherry said...

The struggle is definitely real! And yes, the dog adds a whole different element to the struggle. Sigh. Our "trick" for Cocoa this year was to roll a ball across the floor toward the camera right when we wanted her to look at it. Of course, inside pictures did make for problems with her glowing eyes so I had to edit those. :-) And yes, I had to hold onto her collar to make her stay.

Jeannette said...

Seriously. I read this when you first posted it, but needed to wait and come back to comment because my pain was still too fresh weeks after doing our own Christmas picture. Next year, let's just photoshop.