I’ll preface this to say…our family pictures were more along the lines of those viral forwards that everyone laughs about and says “thank GOD that wasn’t us”.  And just wait for it.  The truth is in the pudding.  Really, I don’t even know what that last phrase means, but…it sounds better than the truth is at the end 😉

And yet… I’ll start of with what we wore, because well…that’s what this blog is mostly about 🙂I scored this top from The Oxford Trunk for $10 (!!!) when they had a big sale.  I got it in both white and black, and I looooove them!!  A post with me wearing the black version is coming soon. These next two are a little out of focus (we missed our mark in the excitement), but I don’t care 🙂 She’s been extra into giving kisses lately, and I’m not complaining!! And…here’s our holiday card 🙂  Not at all what I had planned, but it’s what we got.  And…I kind of think it’s perfect 🙂SO….keeping it real ahead of the real “Keeping it Real” at the bottom.  All of the above pics of me and Maya were taken a few days ago.  The holiday card…3 weeks ago…

I have a list of suggestions for clients before we take family pictures, and I absolutely LOVE when they put some time and effort not only into what they wear, but how they want their pictures to look.  That said, my number one goal is to make sure everyone has FUN…and then I capture that.

Well….none of that usually happens for us haha.  What’s the phrase “The cobblers children have no shoes”??

I’ve been insanely busy doing everyone else’s holiday pictures, and we’ve had a LOT of stuff going on personally so I honestly wasn’t sure we’d even have time to take ones for ourselves.

ANYWAY.  I had a last minute cancellation about 3 weeks ago, the weather was actually clear, so we scoured everyone’s clothes to find things that were clean and somewhat went together, I grabbed the tripod and away we went.  Maya is always so excited when her brothers are in the back seat with her, so she was chatting and laughing the whole way there.  I was getting hopeful that we would get some great shots of everyone…

We all get out, and I get a few pics of the boys with the Huz.  Again thinking  “This is going to be great!!”  Maya was just running around happy as a clam, playing and then trying to get in their shots.   As I’m getting the tripod set up to get a group pic, Maya starts howling.  Like a hysterical crying that I’ve never heard before.  I make sure she’s not hurt (she’s not).  All she wants to do is have me rock her on the bench.  Um….are you kidding me?!  The kid that gets her picture taken almost every day of her life, and is totally used to having it taken with a self timer and tripod is now flipping the F out!  Inconsolable even??!  I tried taking a few and playing with her like I always do.  NOT WORKING.  At this point, I’m losing my patience and am getting totally frustrated.  Tears may have been shed from both of us.  Honestly, I really just wanted to get ONE picture of all of us, and a few of Maya with her brothers!  It sounds like something that would be easy to get, but with teenage boys and us all being so busy.  It just isn’t… Oh well.  I Photoshopped two images together to get the one for our card, and honestly, that’s all we needed.  I got a few of the 3 of the kids at Thanksgiving, and that is better than most…

On me…

This is what really went down… hahaha.  I can somewhat laugh about it now :{And here’s the Huz finally calming her down, and honestly my favorite picture of the entire shoot… She looooves her Daddy!!  Sadly, it was too late to get all of us into this moment.  I don’t care though, because THIS…was all worth it for me 🙂