Christmas Pictures

Yesterday we had an appointment to get Christmas pictures taken.  We have never had a formal dressy picture of the whole family taken and thought it was time to do so.  Since Jammer is in size 14 boys, I figured it was the last time in a while that I was going to find matching sweaters for all four boys in a long while.  Thank you Children's Place - and I got a fabulous deal!  Anyhow, the time seemed right!  As with any event with a large family, there are hickups along the way and we try to have some humor through them - which I'm not always good at, but I try! 

Yesterday was also Runner's birthday and so as tradition has it, Jon got Runner up early and took him out to breakfast and then to Mass.  They arrived home about 9:00 am and I greeted them with Bumble curled up in my arms not feeling well.  He didn't have a fever, but he was clearly under the weather.  What should we do?  Give him some medicine and let's push forward!  Jon only had that day off and there were no more apts. available before Christmas.  The plan was to get the pictures on disk (with our military discount of 50% this would be resonable), then we could make our Christmas Cards with them.  We had to be ready by 10:15.  Let's go!  Now usually I get myself ready before everyone else, otherwise I usually don't have time for myself, but because of Bumble not feeling well I didn't have this chance.  It showed!

We finally make it to the studio, only 5 minutes late!  Bumble was doing pretty good.  However, the photographer was a teenage girl with little experience, and a bit of an attitude on top of it.  She clearly wasn't thrilled to be working with a large family with many little ones.  We worked for about 45 minutes trying to get some good pictures of the whole family, and then split boys and girls for some pictures.  At the end Jon took the kids to get a treat, while I reviewed the pictures on their computer.  Very few of them looked very good.  I can't say I was thrilled with any.  However, I figured with the disk I could doctor up a couple of the pictures and they would work for our Christmas cards.  However, surprise, we can't get our military discount on the disk, only on the sheets.  This was not clearly stated online.  I was not about to spend that amount of money for these pictures that I wasn't thrilled with anyway.  Our sitting had been free so we ended up walking away without any pictures.  Sigh!

So what next??  Our good camera had gotten knocked off the counter a few weeks ago by one of the children as they waved a towel in the air.  An accident, but frustrating!  We had an old cheap camera that kinda worked, so we put batteries in it, taped the cover shut and headed to the park.  I knew I could get the true smiles of my children captured, even with this crazy camera!  In the last year I have really come to enjoy photography.  Some day I would love to get a great camera and take some classes, but until then my complete amatuer pics with cheap cameras will have to do!

It took a bit for the kids to get over the fact that they had to take more pictures for their neurotic mother, but soon they were hamming it up.  After several takes, and pauses waiting for the camera to work properly - having to turn it off and on, we got some great pictures.  They are coming on the Christmas cards in the mail! I hope you have enjoyed some of the out takes we took while we blew of steam!  I'm working on the humor!  Another year we will get that formal picture to hang over the fireplace, for now I will enjoy the craziness of our lives!