Family Photo Advice - Hire a Professional

I know it seems early to be discussing holiday cards, but as far as I'm concerned, get 'em done as early as possible. Also, I'm going with "holiday" cards because I have lots of Jewish friends and family members and I feel like it's unfair to foist my particular religious views upon them. If I didn't celebrate Christmas and got a card that was all, "Merry Christmas! Let us all rejoice in the Savior's birth," I'd be irritated. To me it's like telling people, "I hope you enjoy my birthday!" So, I stick with "Happy Holidays" which covers everyone. It's just too darned expensive to get one set of cards that says, "Merry Christmas" and another set that says, "Happy Belated Hanukkah! Enjoy your Chinese food and movie on December 25th."

Certainly this must be fake. It's too perfect.

 But, again, I digress from my original topic of holiday pictures. When the Girl and the Boy were little, I attempted to take their pictures for our holiday cards. This generally went like this:

The poor Boy is sending you a telepathic message: "Save me."

More of my 2005 holiday photo attempts after the jump...

What says "Holidays" like a sister dragging her infant brother across the floor as he spits up?
Note the ugly humidifier and pile of toys in the background.

Here they're both over it to the point that teeth brushing seems more appealing than posing.
The Boy is thinking,"Damn it! Why don't I have teeth?"

This is the picture I used that year. The best I can say about it is that no one is crying.
By the way, if you're thinking, "Oh, so sweet, she's holding his hand," she's not.
She's just messing with him.

Once the Baby was born, I knew that there was no possible way that I could get three children to pose for a holiday picture, so I got all fancy and hired a professional. We have also taken the pictures over the summer so that we don't have to deal with it in the fall because we're always crazy-busy. Since 2009, we've had Marti Stone, a Maine photographer take our pictures while we're on vacation. She is so nice and easy to work with. I highly recommend her. I don't know how likely it is that anyone reading this blog will require a photographer in Maine, but crazier things have happened.

Over the years, she's taken great pictures of the kids and it's wild to see how much they've changed in just four years.

 From five years:

To nine years:

From four years:

To eight years:

Shhhh, he actually looks kind of the same.

From nine months:

To four years:

Then:

Now:

Family then:

Now:

Just so you have a point of comparison, here are a couple of pictures I took of the kids all dressed, while we were waiting for Marti to arrive for our photo session:

Not quite as polished! We are very honored that Marti decided to feature half-a-decade (aka five years) of pictures of our family in her blog. I feel sure that this is my fifteen minutes of fame, so I'm taking advantage of it by feuding with Lady Gaga and setting a fire in our neighbor's driveway. Check out Marti's website and see if you can spot the kids in the homepage slide show.