The annual Christmas card photo fiasco!

WHY DO I EVEN TRY?
Every year it's the same. We fight and fight the kids to get one decent picture for our Christmas card. You'd think they'd get better with age but it's not the case! This year the older ones were worse than the little kids. Here's my little attempt at capturing family bliss!

Mistake #1: I thought that **I** would take the pictures this year. Yeah, my husband is a photographer...blah, blah, blah...but I thought I could handle the job of the picture taking and HE could handle the job of wrangling the kids.

Here, I wanted to go for a cool, artsy shot of the kids standing on the hay bales in the field behind our house.

They just played instead.

Once I did get them up on the bales and still for a moment, Danny and John Paul had a few laughs.....and wouldn't stop!

So I thought, fine, it was a stupid idea anyway and I made them sit by the bales instead. It would have been easier to get a bunch of monkeys to all look at the camera all at the same time and smile!

Then we went to the bridge.
I thought some action shots would be really nice.
I got action all right!
Lots of rock and stick throwing!

Then Kyle stole John Paul's rock...

...and crying ensued.

The blur is my fault.
It's what happens when you are trying to take pictures and yell at boys who steal rocks.

So we go back to the field and try to get some nice sunset shots.
The boys wanted Abby in the pictures and she would have none of it. Getting her to just sit was almost as bad as trying to get the boys to smile!

Then little Danny gets hurt!
I think Abby stepped on his leg.

Amazing!
Seeing their little brother get hurt is the only thing that makes them smile!