Christmastime Is Here

Probably our longest lasting holiday tradition is going to cut down our Christmas tree as a family. We stumbled upon a tree farm when Maddux was a wee little one, and we've returned every year since. Because I know how our schedule(s) tend to get, especially during December, and because I know I'm cheap thrifty, and while I like to send Christmas cards, I have to get that Thanksgiving weekend 50% off deal, I decided to tempt fate and try to get our family photo at the tree farm. Hey, we were going to be there anyway, amongst the beautiful background. Why not just throw on some coordinating clothes and let me take a handful of photos? And then we could ask a stranger to snap a few photos of the five of us together.

Even though I was formulating this plan all week, I don't think i clued anyone in until the morning of, so we had a little bit of a scramble to find clean, photo-worthy clothes (meaning Eli and Lehr may or may not be wearing the same thing they wore last year). Ruby absolutely took her hair out on the drive to the tree farm (despite my labored efforts to braid it up for 15 full minutes at home). And when we arrived, Ruby's boots were not in the car. I honestly wasn't phased; Lehr could hold her for the photos and I knew most people wouldn't even notice.

The big kids did what they do every year: feign protest to me shooting photos.

I made each of them pair up at some point, jackets were sometimes on and sometimes not (it was FREEZING!).

I got a few of Lehr with each one, shoes or no shoes.

Then I passed off the camera to Maddux so she could take a few of me with Ruby and me with Lehr. As expected, she was amazing.

Finally, I picked the lucky family to take a few of us all. Some maneuvering of our people later, we had 4-5 shots of us all with eyes open and pleasant looks on our face. Thank you, random stranger.

And we also had these fun ones the rest of the time.