where to start. holiday photo cards are always, in my opinion, SO fun to get in the mail. i not so secretly love receiving them every year, now more than ever because we don't see as much of our friends as we used to. having kids makes it even more fun because, lets face it, they are the ones that REALLY make a holiday card. so...this year, i scoured the pages of pinterest and several of my favorite blogs in search of inspiration. i came upon the photo in the previous post and fell in love....it was simple with a touch of rustic whimsy and seemed like something that even with 2 kiddos, we could accomplish without a fight. right? SO WRONG!!!!!!!
despite the fact that we were literally traveling a quarter of a mile away to take advantage of the old siding backdrop at a friends house, it took us about 6-7 trips in and out of the house to get going. did you grab the lights? what about emma's juice? wait...do we have a burpcloth for ben? strike one. we get to our location {sounds glamorous right?} and the light is quickly fading thanks to an overcast sky. it takes us entirely too long to get the lights out of the box and as we are doing so, one of the bulbs spontaneously breaks. who cares, right? until you consider that these puppies are about to be wrapped around me and the three most important things in my life. i failed to consider the fact that christmas lights, when lit, get hot....and again...my grand plan involved draping this things over my munchkins. strike two. i'm wearing a flannel shirt and ryan in a sweater....by the time we get the lights unraveled and plugged in, we're both sweating and looking reallllllly great. ben's starting to fuss because we cut his bottle short to get this done. emma, for whatever reason, is scared of these big bulbs and everytime i pick up a strand and drape it over my shoulder.....she squeals and pushes it off as if to say "Mom, this is a VERY bad idea!". she's in a sweater too so she's getting hot and wiggly. Ryan and I stand back to back and quickly wrap ourselves in lights despite Emma's best efforts otherwise.....and his mother starts snapping photos. at this point i don't even care if no one is smiling if we can all just look at the camera at the same time. but, i also failed to consider that ryan and i would be back to back so we can't tell what the other is doing. emma is yelling "all done! all done!" because she is far more interested in checking out the puppy on site than she is in taking chances of going up in flames for a silly holiday photo. ben is just along for the ride although i'm pretty sure he's thinking "this is so lame, mom." strike three, four, and five. yea.....it was a totally epic disaster nightmare of a photoshoot failure.
here's the best one we got....act surprised when it pops up in your mailbox ;)
it's by far and away NOT the best photo ever taken of our family...and i'll admit, when all of these shenanigans were going down, i was frustrated to all hell. how hard is it to take a friggin family photo? well, i'll tell you. damn hard! ha! but....the chaos that ensued IS our life. our beautiful crazy hectic life raising these kiddos, working hard, and making memories by the mile :) so....i really can't help but smile because in my eyes, the craziness "on set" {and by golly, there was ALOT of it!} is in direct proportion to the love and joy we experience at the same time. i hope that's what my holiday card says this year :)
here are a few "outakes" so you can see what really goes on at a family of 4 photo shoot. brace yourselves. it's about to get ugly. and by ugly...i mean really awesome.
and there you have it. i'm literally laughing out loud as i post these...what a trip. i honestly don't know who i am thinking we'd actually be able to pull this off in a calm, cool, and collected manner....get a grip, lady! the take home message is that it's an emma&ben world and ryan and i are just living in it :)
so please...this year, when you get our holiday card...keep it for as long as you can possibly stand it because we worked dang hard to get that one decent shot. pretty please. or at least lie and tell me you didn't throw it away until after new years ;)
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