I am sure I am not the only one who gets the “Christmas letter.” You know the letter from the perfect family, with the beautiful family picture, which tells of all their accomplishments each year. I remember growing up, my mom received a letter from a family who I think discovered a planet or won the Nobel Prize every single year!
Don’t you ever wish that you could get a “real” Christmas letter. One that talks about dirty floors, flat tires, and the swine flu? If nothing else just to make you feel a little better, that no one is really perfect.
I feel this way every year when we attempt to take our family Christmas picture. It starts in January, I begin to stress about what the kids will wear, haircuts, lost teeth, and fingers up noses. From February to November I take 100′s if not 1000′s of family photos, hoping to find the one. Usually around Thanksgiving I panic, realizing I have not taken the perfect picture and I take 200 pictures Thanksgiving weekend and use the least worst one out of the bunch.
So this year I am tired of pretending that my kids can all smile at the exact same time, with no crying, fingers up noses or in a sibling’s ear. Please tell me you have this problem too? I thought it would be fun to share our favorite REAL family photos. It might not make it on your Christmas card, but it can make it on your blog. Next Monday, December 21st, I’ll put up a linky and you can link up with your REAL family photo. I have a great one to share too, and I am looking forward to seeing all your REAL family moments captured forever on film, or at least on your memory card.
If you don’t have a blog, you can email me your photo and I will include it in my post.
I am right there with ya! We have four – ages 3-11 with 3 boys and one girl. Something about boys and trying to get a nice picture. This year went better though b/c my MIL wanted a family picture (the whole family with all her children and grandchildren) for her birthday, which is in November. So we all gathered at a local scenic spot w/a professional photographer. He took pictures of the entire family and then each individual family. We had several to choose from taken by a professional photographer. I ordered 25 Christmas cards from him for $25. More expensive than what I usually do but I’m not passing up a good picture!
I just posted some doozies a few days ago. I’ll have to come back and link them up.
Can’t wait to see all the others! Fun!
Are you kidding? This is why I don’t do family photos. We have some individual shots that are reasonable, but in our family we can’t get everyone’s eyes open at the same time. My wedding photos were a real challenge. We never did get one of my family with everyone’s eyes open!
The best pictures are the not perfect ones. This year our daughter sent us their Christmas picture (I requested it) and one person our of five is looking into the camera. I love it. Still waiting for the one of our son’s family… but I know it will be right up there with the best!
I completely gave up and used individual photos of the girls in a “season” themed collage for our card. Some of our best pictures are the funniest ones!
Have you been to my house? We thought we were moving last year, so my fam. photo has boxes all around us! Then, there was a job loss this past year, so my family letter would surely not be about Nobel prizes, etc.
Have a wonderful Christmas with your family – we’re all in this together!
My children have never really liked photo shoots. My oldest has a studio baby photo that we say is really Alfred Hitchcock or some other stodgy, stoic old man.
When my boys were little, they made the lady at Sears cry during their photo shoot because they wouldn’t stop crying after they had fought the instructions to sit still for a few photos.
My now 7 yo daughter pitched a royal fit at The Picture People when she was 3. She is so photogenic & friendly that I have never understood the Mr. Hyde tranformation during these photo sessions.
The youngest has been fairly cooperative, but a photo of all 4 of the kids when she was about 2 shows her in motion out of the photo.
Last year, I opted for the outdoors, non-studio family photos with a “professional” photographer. I have plenty of photos where no one (but dh & me) would look at the camera.
And I purposely had my 10 yo (who happily complied as a real booger) stick his finger up his nose so I could snap a shot…just want to be able to blackmail him when he starts dating.
No, family pictures are not my fondest memories. It’s more of an obligation thing….an obligation I would rather skip.
I only have 2 kids and I can never get them both smiling and looking at the camera at the same time. Either one or the other is making some kind of face or looking somewhere else.
Great idea!!!! It is interesting that Christmas cards only have the “good” news in them and none of the trials and bad stuff. Good reminder to be real!
ha ha I gave up on the family photo and just made a card of my 2 boys. They are cute no matter what! The problem was finding a photo I liked of me…since I am usually the photographer there are few to choose from.
Thank you! Glad I’m not the only one with the same problem!
I see my Christmas letter as a once-a-year chance to testify to God’s goodness to some of my friends and relatives that otherwise don’t stay in touch. I don’t want to make our lives sound perfect so I include the quirky and normal things about us. This year was the hardest year of our lives so I listed all the significant trials we had in one column, with all of the answers to prayer and grace God gave us for the situations on the other column. I hope my letter ministered to those who are going through similar things or will perhaps face trials in 2010. I don’t just talk about the good of our kids but am not afraid to mention the negatives too (like our son just happens to have the perfect name for him Jeremiah–he’s always crying and our daughter needs to be reminded often that she is not the mom and our baby loves to play in the garbage!)
i love this idea. i’m going to write a letter too.
This year I used a card with 2 slots, so I could just take individual pictures of each of my boys…since as they get older they get harder and harder to photograph.
However, I will admit that I did photoshop my 3 year old’s head from another photo and add it to the picture I ended up using last year LOL!
Can’t wait to see all the fun, count me in!
I don’t try too hard. It’s hard to, since the times when we a) all together as a family and b) able to have someone take our photo are few and far between.