Picture Perfect

Last month, Kacey published a post highlighting different companies that specialize in holiday photo cards. The post coincided with an appointment that she, Thuy, and I made for our respective families to take the all-important Christmas card photo. Early one Saturday morning in October, each of us prepped our families and trekked to a fairly remote beach in San Francisco. The photos that resulted from that session were hilarious. Honestly, if I had the extra money, I would purchase them and post the "best of" on our blog. They really were that bad. A combination of wind, cold, sand, water, and one very tired baby L made the entire event laughable.

After the tragic professional photo session, I decided that I would have to forge ahead on my own and capture the beauty and innocence of my children on film. Here are the results from this week's photo session. The pictures are so good, I am having a super-duper hard time deciding which one to use. Won't you please help?

This would make for a wonderful holiday greeting card. L munching on G's BPA-laden, most likely covered in toxic paint, choking hazard toy. Where is G? He would be jumping off of our front steps, totally disregarding my pleas to sit still for 5 minutes.

This is one of my favorites from the series. Look at L. She has the expression that I get when I am completely bothered and do not want to do something. The women in my family do not exactly possess the ability to disguise their emotions.

This is a shot of the side of my neighbor's home, taken while I was attempting to lunge for L who was crawling away on our very wet lawn in search of grass and leaves to eat. The picture was not a complete loss, though, as the top of G's head appears in the bottom left-hand corner.


I think the caption for this photo should be, "Are you done yet because I certainly am."

This is the last photo that I will share today. I am a big fan of using props in my children's photos. The distraction that they provide sometimes allows me to snap the shot that I am looking for. In this case, I put L on a wooden rocking horse. Moments after doing so, G thought it would be super funny to rock the horse as hard as he could. I think the photo really captures the sheer terror that L is experiencing in that moment.

-Francesca