family pictures!

I feel as if because I am a photographer I cannot ever get my family pictures to turn out the way I want them to.  I get a vision in my head of what I want and then entrust someone else to help me pull that off, and it doesn't usually work.  Probably also has to do with the part of me that's a control freak.  But that's another story ;) 

Well this year my friend Elaine, who is also a photographer, made a trade.  My family pics for her family pics.  And I was SO grateful to get to do this.  Elaine absolutely helped us pull off what I was dreaming for our first official family pictures as a family of five.

So we drove about 20 minutes out of town and trekked into an open field right before sunset. 

We did a little loving on our Pax (and a lot of wiping up spit up! The joys of a baby, right?)

Then, to get everyone in good moods, we did a LOT of tickling...

And also some cuddling...

And we were finally ready to get some shots (Nolan is just too much in both of these pictures)

I even got a couple sweet pictures of me with my THREE boys!

And here they are- the winners!  I'm so thankful to not have just one, but several good options for our family picture to put on our Christmas card & enlarge to frame in the house!

And even a great shot of Dathan & I! Ahh! It's been several years since we got a good picture of the two of us!

We had Sean sit in the grass and hold Pax VERY carefully while we took the pictures of just Dathan and I.  When we finished we looked and it was just the sweetest thing to see.  My 3 boys sitting so calmly together!

We, of course, had to bribe the big boys to cooperate during our session (hey- I am not above bribing my children in a situation like this!).  Of course they picked McDonald's Happy Meals as their bribe. Yaaaaay (please hear my sarcasm there LOL). 


Dathan and I snapped this photo of us in front of McDonald's when we got there.  I have to give credit to two very talented friends of mine.  Breanne is the one who cuts my hair, and last time he cut it she curled it for me.  Well, everyone FREAKED out and loved the way it looked (including myself).  So, she was kind enough to curl my hair for me on our picture day, because I knew I could never get it to look like the way she did it ;)  THEN my friend Cheryl is a makeup artist and offered to do my makeup for me.  I was thinking some blemish hiding and eye makeup doing but no- she busted out the big guns... literally!  She airbrushed my face and even put fake lashes on (maybe I shouldn't be saying this so you all think I look this good all the time? haha!).  It was fun to be super girly for a day :)

I'm so excited to hang these prints up on our collage wall! Now I just have to finish painting the frames....