Our Christmas Card Picture(s)

The weekend after Thanksgiving, I made plans to have the kids pose for our Christmas card picture.  I had their outfits all laid out on my bed and was anxious to snap one decent picture that I could design a card around.  The weather was definitely chilly, but I was hopeful that the kids would cooperate long enough to get most of them looking at the camera.  Then, we could come inside ... change their clothes ... and have the rest of the day to work on decorating for the holidays.

Steve suggested a picture down at the park and the kids were completely on board with this idea; that is, until they realized that it is usually about 10 degrees colder down at the lake.

A warm-up picture with coats to see how it would look.  2 out of 4 ... not bad.

We stripped off their coats and that is when Jack melted down.  Yes, my toughest one in the bunch (who also had long-sleeves on) started complaining about how cold he was 15 seconds into the photo shoot.

The wind was blowing Sophia's beautiful curls into some sort of unnatural shape and Jimmy just couldn't understand what Jack's problem was.

We pulled the plug on this operation at that point.  No decent picture.

Then, I suggested that we get back in the warm van and head into town for a picture.  Maybe it would be a little warmer, maybe the change in venue would work better for the kids and maybe there might be some bribery involved.  After all, they were all dressed up with nowhere to go and more importantly, no usable Christmas picture on my camera.

We drove to a local park and let the kids sort of dictate where we would take the photo.  They wanted to have it taken on the 20 foot tall slide, but we compromised on a bench with a nice background.

This was our first shot, to which Sophia later looked at it and said, "well, it's nice, but we just need to fix Jack's eyes."  Yes, that's all.

And then THIS happened!  The perfect photo ... just what I was dreaming of.

And then my heart melted after I captured this:

Jack was in a great mood now ...

... especially because we promised that we could go down the road and look at the parked construction vehicles.  I'm pretty sure that he did a little happy dance right there on the bench.  Yup, he did.

Wearing Steve's hat:

Our other Christmas card picture where we wrote: "We're diggin' this holiday season."  Corny, yes.  But it's perfect for our little brood.

And some quick pictures of Jack loving every minute that we spent in this parking lot ...