Good Tidings to You

Oh, the joys of the family Christmas photo.

I could write for an hour describing our ordeal, but I'll just hit on the highlights.

Let's start with the weather. It was cloudy, windy, and in the 20's. But Scott was determined to get an outdoor shot. Needless to say, the coordinating outfits were no longer an issue. We would be wearing our heaviest winter survival gear.

Our next problem was the issue of taking the picture ourselves. Nobody else was crazy enough to brave the elements on a Saturday when they could be sleeping in. This meant Scott would have to set up the camera on a tripod and then attempt to get the kids to smile charmingly at a blinking black box.

The biggest problem of all was our very own little Ebenezer who was cold and cranky and in no mood to smile at anything or anyone.

So we got home with about 50 shots. Surely there would be one decent one. That's all we needed. Just one.

We had lots of shots of Scott's profile because the camera was on a 6 second timer and he wouldn't make it in time. We had one shot of just our backs as we are looking down at Scott after he tripped and fell trying to beat the timer. (This was actually funny later on, when we had thawed enough to see the humor in it). There were pictures of Isaac pulling Katherine's hair, pictures of me trying to hold Isaac down as he fought to get free, and lots of pictures with at least one person looking off to the right or left. We ended up with one good shot that captured everyone looking and smiling. The only problem was that Isaac wasn't even in it. He had finally managed a successful escape and was making a run for the car.

So we used the only other picture that met our very low standards - It actually had all five of us in it. It's not a good picture, but it will have to do.

Oh yeah, and to make matters worse, it began to snow the very next day. There were beautiful, picturesque backgrounds in all directions. Scott's mom suggested that we go back out to get a picture of us in the snow. Let me just say, YOU COULD NOT PAY ME ENOUGH TO REPEAT THAT ORDEAL. It's behind us. Over. Done.

Until next year.