1. Take your photograph when your children are well-fed and rested. (Not right after church when the baby is looong overdue for a nap and everyone’s low-blood sugar is resulting in impatience and grumpiness.) You can also just hire a professional family photographer like Sarah Drewry for professional photos, learn more about her on her website.
2. Make sure your husband is well-fed. (Because you’ll need his help to wrangle babies, arrange children, shoo chickens, and hold ponies. And if he’s hungry {see above}, he’ll give up on your perfect holiday photo shoot way too quickly.
3. Find a clean, white pony to add something unique and meaningful to your family’s photo. (Preferrably not one that was rolling in her muddy field just as you are all walking outside to take pictures.)
4. Make sure your children are well-groomed and bathed. (or else they’ll be wearing handknits in all the pictures to cover up)
5. Drain all tubs of standing water. (Because you know the baby will find them. And while you’re directing the brushing of the pony and making sure noone gets stomped on by the same nervous pony, the baby will find the water and be up to her elbows in it before you turn back around.)
6. Lock in the chickens. (They distract the photographer.)
7. Remember that one of the things you love most about your family is that it’s big, crazy and chaotic. But every once in awhile, you get a glimpse of almost-perfection. And there among the five hundred wacky outtakes, there’ll be one that captures just that.
don’t know which photo i love most!
mmm. that’s me. xo.
always a fun experience.
How perfectly perfect… all of them!
oh, molly. beyond perfect, really. each and every one!
Total perfection, Molly (and I mean the out-takes too)
So much fun to see the out-takes.
Love this! My own Christmas card photo session was remarkably similar – without the horse though.
GORGEOUS!
love it! I’ve been putting this off….
Great timing! “family photo” was on our weekend list and didn’t happen…Thanks for the tip about hand knits! All you pictures tell the story.
Beautiful
You have such a beautiful family.Very good looking chickens too 🙂
Lovely pictures! That last one is perfect! I like the one with your little girl touching the water in the tub too!
Thanks for sharing this – all the photos – beautiful!
Oh just perfect! Serendipitous, no?
just wonderful! any holiday photo with a four girls and pony is magic.
What a great post. Made me laugh! And boy can I relate. Our photo taking sessions go a lot like that, too.
oh molly, you have no IDEA how many grins this brought to my face.
a good card photo is my one to-do for today (yes, i know, it’s december 22. my middle name is Procrastinate. also, these things bring me no end of dread. for while i have 10,000 photos of my kids from last year, not one (!) includes all 3 of them, actually smiling-ish.)
i needed this. thank you.