The Woes of Christmas Cards

What can I say? I am VERY late getting my Christmas cards prepared this year.

I had this vision of having cute, little, handmade, cards and a cozy family portrait enclosed in each one. But in reality, I haven't been able to make any cards. Heck, I haven't even made it to the store to purchase any cards! We have attempted several times to get a family picture taken. Yet to date, we have no recent photos to include of the kids or family.

Last month we went to a professional to have a family portrait taken. The problem with getting family pictures taken is that as a mother you really have no idea what the children are doing in the photos. You just have to point them towards the camera and then smile and look at the camera yourself. You aren't able to see their faces at the time.

Well, during our professional family photo shoot the lady took hundreds of pictures of our family. Yet in every single picture Marcus decided to make a face like he was growling. (I think he was trying to look cool for the pictures.) Sophia decided that she would rather be walking around the studio, so she attempted to squirm free from my arms in every single picture. We tried all of the old parent tricks (coaching, pleading, candy bribery, sneaky tricks, and finally...the "death stare") yet nothing we did could get the kids to just look at the camera.

Doug and I debated taking the kids to sit on Santa's lap this year. We thought we might be able to snap off a few cute pictures of the kids with Santa. Yet just looking at the long ,winding, lines at the mall filled with crying, unhappy kids was enough to change our minds. The shear thought of having to stand in line for an hour or more with toddlers made me exhausted.

So tonight we tried to take our own family Christmas photos in front of the Christmas tree. Doug and I gave the children a bath. We arranged and set up a place to take the photos. We got the kids dressed in cute little matching pajama sets. We took many, many photos. We took so many photos that our camera eventually ran out of batteries. And yet, we still couldn't get the kids to look at the camera at the same time. The few times we could get them to look at the camera they moved so quickly that our camera's shutter speed wasn't fast enough to capture the moment. So the pictures are a "blur" of movement.

Finally after about 20 minutes of trying, Doug and I just looked at each other and laughed. We finally accepted that we may just not have a cute picture of the kids this year. And even though we may not have been able to capture the kid's properly on film....let me just tell you: they looked adorable in their matchng Christmas pajamas.

Here are just some of our photos from tonight's photo shoot.






I am signing off this post reminding myself that maybe I will finally get my Christmas cards finished next week. And then trying to forget that I still have to get thank you cards written and sent out for Marcus's birthday party after that. D'oh!