Welcome to My World: Our Family

Let's just start by saying I have a love/hate relationship with family pictures. I love having them. I hate the process of doing them. It is really hard to coordinate the clothing of 8 people, especially 8 people with opinions. When they were younger, I just picked the clothes out and told them to wear them. Now, they have to like the clothes. That really complicates things.

They say, "a picture says a thousand words," that is true in this case. The stories behind these pictures are way more than what you see. Thankfully, we got some good shots for all of our effort.

Here is the process we go through.
~It has taken us six months to settle on a date that works for us. Our schedule has been so crazy with sports, we just have not had any time where we are all free. Of course we have to match that with our photographer's schedule.

~Next, is the clothing shopping. I tried to begin in our closets. I was able to take care of Rick, Abby, Sam, Isaiah and Laila with clothing we already had. I had to shop for Cody, Lauren, and me. That involved several purchases of possible options, trying clothing on, laying it all out to see if it coordinated, and returning what we didn't use.

~Finally, the day of the pics arrived. We scheduled them in the late afternoon in order to get the best lighting. About the time we started getting ready, the wind started picking up outside, clouds started moving in, and I started freaking out. I knew that if we did not do the pictures on that day, it would be September before we could try again. I really wanted to do summer pics this year.

~About 1/2 hour before the shoot, our photographer called and asked what we wanted to do. I told her we were all dressed and ready, that was an accomplishment on its own. If she was up for it, let's give it a try. As we headed out the door, we discovered that Sam was missing his shoes. I looked everywhere! In a last ditch effort, I ran downstairs to look in a box of shoes, and there they were!!

~On the way there, everyone was so grumpy. I am praying the whole time that the weather will hold off. I even texted friends and asked them to pray. Then, Sam gets a nosebleed! I told him he better not get any blood on his clothes! Ugh!!

~Finally, we arrived. It was a bit windy at times, but the rain held off. The overcast skies made for the perfect lighting. I am glad to have the pics and to know that I have at least a year before I have to go through all of this again.

You have seen a few decorating my blog. Here are the best of the pics from our photo shoot! There were lots of good ones and so hard to choose.

I will give you one guess at who was the ham during the photo shoot and ended up with the most pics! Since they are about to have bdays, in the next month, I am listing their ages as their upcoming age.

Abby - 12 years old