Family Photo Shoot 2013

Every so often I get and itch to take a new family picture.  And that thought happened to occur to met his month since I meant to take a picture in the spring and it just never happened.  We are lucky and have a friend that is a hobby photographer like John.  So we swap photos.  He takes ours and then John takes one for his family.  It works out perfectly. 

I had a location in mind for our picture this year.  It was a community barn and field/grassy area about 30 minutes away.  We usually don't drive that far but I had seen several pictures from this area and decided it would be worth it.  So we began the drive attempting to keep our kids looking picture perfect on the way there.  About 2 minutes into the drive we had whining, complaining, and threats of vomit.  As you can imagine it was a very pleasant drive.

We finally go to the barn and much to our surprise there was a wedding rehearsal dinner taking place.  This added to the pleasantness of our attitudes.  We looked around the area there for another place to take pictures and found nothing.  So we headed back to our old standby down by the Eagle River.  Our photographer however ended up at another location in Eagle due to a lack of communication.  The clock was ticking by this time and we were quickly losing our light. 

John started snapping pictures of the kids. The kids whined, were silly, complained, and did just about everything a parent wouldn't want their kids to do while being photographed.  It was lovely. 

Shortly thereafter we met up with our photographer friend.  By this point the kids were done, John and I were cranky, and there were very few polite words being exchanged between members of our family.  It's probably best there were strangers around so we had to at least hide our annoyance for our children...a bit.

But lo and behold, we got an amazing picture.  We actually all look happy and pleasant.  Pictures can really be deceiving, eh?!

Here are some other random shots.  They are all unedited but they show some of the great faces we got that night.

The Emmie being silly face.

 

The "mom is frustrated" and Owen is trying to be funny pose.

 

The Owen is sick of smiling face combined with the "Emmie stand up straight" face.

 

The uninterested Emmie and Owen trying to get attention look.

 

And Owen and Emmie showing everyone that they are done.  Seriously done. 

For the record, Ains and I were pretty consistent with our poses and our smiles...I can't say as much for the rest of the family!

Family Photo Shoot 2013

Here are a few of my favorite out-takes and shots of the kids.  They were being silly and goofing off, which if I'm being honest was just plain annoying to me a the time.  But I'm ready to laugh at it and appreciate their craziness now!  It just took a few days.

Emmie's Big Day

 It was on this dreary September morning that Emmie started preschool.  I can't believe my youngest is in preschool! 

 

She was bummed that she had to sit around and wait a full 30 minutes after Ains and Owen went to school to get to go to her school.   And from what I hear she had a great time.  Although the only information I got out of her was that they had grapes and goldfish for snack.  That must have been her favorite part of the day! 

 Emmie is so full of spunk and a constant entertainer around here.  I'm wondering if she will be the same way in her class.  Only time will tell I suppose....

While I'm a little bit sad, I'm also a little bit happy.  I truly feel that I am in the prime years of parenthood.  My kids are old enough that we can all have fun together without worrying about diapers or naps, but young enough that they still like their mom and dad.  Golden years I tell you!