Family Pictures

So there we were, in the middle of this Halloween craziness and stress when I decided that we needed to stop putting off family pictures. The weather was starting to get more unpredictable, Daylight Savings Reset happened with its resulting loss of an hour of daylight each day, and my hair needed to be re-done. These three situations left us a very narrow window for family pictures. I wanted to take pictures VERY soon after doing my hair, and with constant work on our basement, an unexpected time change at church, and a busy November coming, I came up with this idea: what if I take our family pictures this year instead of trying to coordinate with Lea and add another thing we need to align for this to happen (AKA her schedule)? Brian can just meet us at the location on his way home from work, we'll have the timer all ready and take care of this thing. Yeah, we can do the tripod and a timer and we'll just have fun with it. Yeah. Not the best idea I've ever had. Long story short, after taking hundreds of pictures, losing our tempers with our children, losing daylight super quickly, and sifting through said hundreds of photos trying to find something decent to put up on the wall (and putting it off for a month because I was too bummed about how awful they were), here are our best pictures:

This one is actually two pictures combined into one, but it ended up looking fabulous. I just wish I could pull my hair back over my shoulder. Lea could have pointed that out. Oh well, everyone else looks fabulous.  

 I sit taller than Brian. He really is taller than me. 

 These last pictures were illuminated with my speedlight because the lighting was GONE by that point. And I forgot to get one with just these two:( Good thing I'm a photographer and constantly taking pictures of them!

Yeah, not my favorites. And if I ever think of doing this again, I have this post to remind me that it is a BAD idea and that Lea is a necessary part of our amazing family picture process.