our "picture-perfect" day...

It seems like every year when family picture time rolls around I get all of these great ideas...I get all excited to plaster my walls with priceless pictures of my beautiful boys and handsome hubby and I just can't wait for the big day to come.

This is usually how it goes...I spend hours and hours going from store to store searching for perfectly coordinating outfits for everyone, I spend way too much money on clothes, accessories, shoes and anything else we might need, I pick a photographer (which is not an easy task for me since I am a photographer myself and I am super picky), I seek out the perfect location, I bribe the boys (and Judd) with pretty much anything they could ever want, and the picture-perfect day has begun right?...hahahaha! Not a chance!

I don't know why I continue to subject myself to the torture of family pictures. I secretly wish I was one of those people who doesn't really care about doing pictures often, but I can't seem to help myself. I am obsessed with pictures and all year long I spend my time photographing other "picture perfect" families. I LOVE my job. I love seeing moms so excited when they get their pictures back and they turn out even better than they had expected because their beautiful kids were so obedient and cooperative. I love being able to capture such fun moments for people that I know they will cherish forever. It is seriously the best feeling and for some reason I have this crazy idea that that is how our family picture sitting will go as well.

Every year I fight with Judd and the kids about it and more often than not one, if not all of us are crying before we even get out of the car and this year was no exception. After I finished dressing all the boys, doing their hair, ironing their shirts etc, etc, etc. we all piled into the car to pick up Judd at his office in downtown Salt Lake since we were doing the pics downtown as well.

Cooper of course fell asleep in the car since he chose to designate family picture day as the one day of the year he chose not to take a nap, the big boys were being their usual fighting/arguing/kicking/punching/screaming/messing up their hair selves and I was just trying not to cry as we were driving down I-15 and raindrops starting splashing down on my car. We finally met up with Judd and we were all running late of course, so Judd had to change his clothes in the back of the tahoe and he wasn't too thrilled about that. We made it to the location and met the photographer just in time for the wind storm of the century to start, followed by the tantrum of the century from Cooper, Dawson having to pee 10,000 times and Braxton crying because his new shoes were giving him blisters. Add to the chaos an outfit change for the whole family, a scraped knee, a broken umbrella, a very uncooperative 2 year old and a very grumpy mommy with wind-blown hair and there you have it...family pictures!

Luckily we had an amazing photographer who was super patient with our crazy family and she was able to get a few keepers. In the car on the way home from the sitting I told Judd that we were never doing family pictures again and he just laughed at me. I hope you all appreciate our Christmas cards this year because it just might be our last...at least until next year when I recover and enter into fantasy land again :)