Christmas 2014

Here we are again at another holiday season.  We are out of town for most of our Christmas break, and attend lots of family Christmases (6 to be exact).  This year was wonderful.  My kids' gifts fit their personalities perfectly, and no one was over the top.  The kids were grateful enough to meet my expectations, and it was fun.  It was a little stressful with Ollie being one this year and being off schedule with all the traveling.  Last year was much more relaxing when she was an infant.  Anyhoo...it was a nice time spent with family and being grateful for our time together and everyone's health.

My Perfect Christmas Card, Decoded

SPOILER ALERT: This is the Christmas card that will be gracing your mailboxes soon- hope I didn't ruin it for anyone!

I read an article recently about how Christmas cards are like Facebook where people only want to portray their lives in this perfect little package (psshhh, who does that??!!) Our family picture stories were so funny this year, I had to share what was behind those cute photos.

First off, see that precious picture where she is whispering in his ear and he has that dreamy, loving look in his eye? She happens to be telling him that she hates him. Yes, good character at it's finest. How do I know? Well, because a split second before, he was being ugly to her, and a split second after, he was screaming about her whispering "I hate you".

Oh, and that family shot of us all walking hand in hand? Look very closely. One child is crying. She is pouting because Brother is squeezing her hand as hard as he can.

The baby is being held in every picture because if we put her down, she screamed. Want proof? Here you go.

 Also, she is old enough to get in on the action. She looks like she's making a silly face in this photo. She's making that face because she is pulling Brother's hair.

To top it all off, like any sane person, I stressed about outfits for 2 months. Color scheme was easy because I found my oldest daughter's outfit first (on clearance- bonus!), and it was fairly easy to find everyone else's outfit, but not my own. After an entire 7 hours in and out of stores looking for the perfect outfit (actually, the idea that was in my head), I ended up ordering some stuff online in multiple sizes. I finally narrowed it down and had jeans, a blouse, cardigan, jewelry, boots, etc., only costing a small fortune. I then ran into a discount store the week before pictures because My son sprung on me that he needed dress slacks for band. There was a cute little navy and cream sweater for $9.99! I loved it. I grabbed it and bought it. The morning of pictures I'm thinking that cute little sweater matches our color scheme, and I will be much more comfortable in jeans that I've owned for 3 years! And, there you have it. The upside was I got to return the other small fortune of an outfit.

So there it is, folks--a little breakdown of our two hour photo shoot that resulted in our precious little Christmas card portraying a perfectly put together little family! Anything but perfect, but perfectly a mess!