Christmas card

To say that I have a recent obsession with the perfect Christmas card would be an understatement.  I love the yearly photo update and am so glad I had kids during a time when photo Christmas cards are popular.  The quest for getting the perfect photo can be stressful and I suppose I've relinquished some of that desire little by little as we add more children to the card!  :)  To get this beauty below, we had to do two separate shoots and I still wasn't completely satisfied, BUT without an equally eager assistant AND the lack of decent weather AND time running short to get them ordered and sent out, I settled for the slightly out-of-focus shot because it was the best of the three of them! 

 

 

Years 2002-2006

 Years 2006-2012

(Christmas morning chaos picture, but this was the only pic I could find of the full row of cards on the window!)  And a link to an old close-up of them

My intent with these "J-O-Y" shirts was a simple background (I was desperately searching around town for an old ornate bench to no avail!) We decided to check out a castle about 20 min. from us, but it took us awhile to find it and our daylight was fading extremely fast...it gets dark around 4:30 in the winter here!!!!  I knew I was pushing my luck on this day after school, but we tried it anyway.  It was FREEZING and no one was particularly cooperative! 

 I was sooooo tempted to use one of these!!!!! 

On Thanksgiving day, the weather was gorgeous (notice the drastic light different between the two sets!), so we squeezed in a 10 min session in the woods a mere 1 minute, stress-free walk from our house!!!!  My initial thought was to have Luke stand behind the girls and lean on the log that they were sitting on like I had done in October but he was just too excited to stay still!  :)  I was satisfied enough with the one I had chosen for the card, but I had still planned on putting them in their shirts in front of the tree (and then I forgot!!!)