Family Portraits

Today we went for family portraits. Afterward, we decided we are not doing that again. We will either pay $350 an hour to have spontaneous style photos done like the ones here, or we'll just get a good camera and do them ourselves, or maybe certain people toying with the idea of doing photography professionally will take them from now on because quite frankly the formal portraits thing down at the mall was super un-fun.

Something about the entire process just wears you down. By the end when you are picking the pictures to buy the poor husbands just stand there in their Christmas-y plaid shirts and say "Yes dear", they would pay anything just to get out of there. The other silly thing is this - why do we wear sweaters and fur and long-sleeved plaid shirts in these pictures? It's 85 degrees outside. And most likely it will be equally as warm in December, so why we feel as though we have to wear ski-clothes in our Christmas photos is beyond me. It's Texas for Pete's sake.

Something happens when you become a Mom - and I know it's not just me - there's this need to save, document and photograph everything. Hence the blogging, the scrapbooks and the tradition of the family Christmas portraits. But we don't necessarily want to document things the way they are, but rather as we wish they would be. I wonder what I'll remember or think about when I look at these photos when I'm an old woman. Will I remember rushing around to get there? That Jacob hated his shoes? That Bella tried to suck her fingers while wearing the white fur mittens and got a mouthful of fur and started bawling? Going to three stores the night before to find teeny tiny black mary janes? Is there any photographer on earth that can capture how much, how deeply, I adore this man and these two small children?