Christmas Card Out-takes

The other day, I got a Christmas card from my friend Karen. On the card are her entire family (3 kids, herself and her hubby), all of them smiling perfectly and looking fabulous. I don't know how some people manage to do get decent Christmas photos with everyone in the picture smiling beautifully! How do those that have 3 kids do it? or those of you that regularly photograph 6 girls (you know who you are Mrs. beautiful pictures)? I had my work cut out for me last week...and I only have 2 kids to work with.

I dressed the boys up in their "ties" and tried to take pictures of them with several backgrounds and tried to place them in several poses. I took posed shots, candid shots, paparazzi shots and yet that elusive "perfect" (I'll even take decent at this point) Christmas card shot never came out.

What did come out was a whole lot of: blurries, oops he moved, Chris wasn't looking, JJ wasn't looking, no one was looking, you have food on your mouth, the dog got in the way, sit next to your brother, closer, closer, OK, not that close, put your arm around him, no don't choke him, smile Chris, no not like that, a real smile, stop bothering your brother, see now you made him cry, stop watching TV, Hey, the camera's over here, just give him the toy, and can we stop taking pictures now mom?


But don't let me tell you all about it. See for yourself: