family pictures

someone (read: matt) thought that it would be a good idea to have grandma try to take family pictures before we looked into hiring someone (my vote). in my defense, i have a lifetime of taking family pictures with my mom - or rather being the subject of my mom's photography with my two brothers. and this was before digital photography and once we did 80 polorids because there wasn't time for developing before getting the pictures out! (my mom says she has no recollection of this happening but i was a teenager and clearly remember it - awful.) anyway, i knew that she would at least pay attention to how we were all looking in the picture so we had a good chance at getting something usable in the end.

our plan was to walk to wendy's for lunch after church and stop at a few locations to take some pictures. unfortunately, the leaves were now mainly brown instead of golden like they were a few weeks ago. it was a nice day and we headed out with high hopes.

i'll say it, i was difficult. we have four children and getting everyone to look at any given time is difficult. i just wanted pictures - lots of pictures - and then we would pick the best one. grandma was going for perfect every time and i just wanted fast. anyway, we tried three or four locations before everyone was just too hungry to have any hope of a good picture. here is one of the better ones that we did not pick for the christmas card.

we did enjoy the walk though and got a few cute pictures along the way.

we had talked about trying for a few more on the walk back, but then we got ice cream intead. there are no pictures after ice cream. not only were they messy, madelyn's teeth were even stained with the dyes from her popscile! yuck!

this was maybe our slowest day of grandma's visit. it was nice that we were able to spend so much of it outside. thanks to grandma for putting up with me and helping us get a very nice (and very free) family picture. love.