That Time Family Pictures Required Two Tries

You guys know that I enjoy telling a story, right? Well ... buckle up. This one's a doozy!

When I was gone for a week in August and then got back and immediately went on a family trip up north, the kids did fantastic. So I thought that doing family pictures two days after I got back from a week at Emerson Exchange would be a good idea and the kids wouldn't be broken.

False.

Picture day dawned extremely sunny, which we would soon learn is actually not amazing for pictures. Poor Kim had to deal with all the shadows as we walked through the woods and we had a hard time finding good spots to stand, even though the fall colors were amazing. We found out later that Kim actually had a setting goofed up on her camera as well, which made many of the pics washed out or grainy. The "funniest" part - weird lighting and a messed up camera were the least of our problems.

Declan was pretty happy during pictures, but was physically incapable of smiling in the direction of the camera. To the side of the camera? Sure. Looking at his feet? No problem. Turning in a full circle? Nailed it. At the camera? Nada.

Quinn basically refused to smile unless she had a minimum nine points of contact with me AND no siblings were touching her. Or looking like they might touch her.

Fiona full-on teenagered out on me near the end and just simply refused to smile. Instead she crossed her arms, stuck out her chin, and scowled.

Mike stomped off, muttering something about kids being broken

Yogs decided he is old and laid down in the middle of the path. Because clearly if no one else could pull it together, he didn't have to either.

So basically, it went well. Sigh.

Due to a combination of, uh, "special" attitudes and the camera settings issue, Kim wanted to do a Take 2 the following weekend.

Against all odds, we got some really sweet photos of the crew between the two sessions. But in case you think I'm exaggerating this whole thing, I leave you with this gem. From Round Two. Which went "better." Stay tuned for the actual good pictures in a future post.

**Auntie reminded me of this epic disaster of a photo shoot. I will admit as challenging as this one was, it's hard to be as bad as that one!