Family Photo Shoot

One of the many things we need to accomplish before HMA is ordering new prayer cards.  That is easily done...if you have a family photo to use.  Taking a current photo, however, is not so easily done.  It's even more difficult to get a nice photo.  I'll just say it: little boys are not usually the most cooperative human beings when it comes to photo shoots.  They run around, wiggle, pick noses, jump up and down, and so on.  But we really needed a current, nice-enough-ish photo since our last prayer card only had two kids on it and we thought it'd be preferable to pass out prayer cards that include smiling faces from the whole family as we are now.

Well, after trying to mentally gear up for several weeks, today was the day.  It was a Sunday, and Sundays = church clothes.  Check.  It was a beautiful sunny day.  Check check.  We found a place with a decent background that was also in the shade and wouldn't wash out our faces.  Check check check.  So far so good.

But before the actual photo shoot, we had to run up the hill to church.  We were already late and the photos would have to wait.

After surviving church (and I mean surviving with a complete meltdown on Aisle 3, which resulted in him needing to be taken out of the service, which resulted in a kicking match as Eli picked him up to leave, which resulted in kicking his biggest brother clean in the face, which resulted in more tears on Aisle 1, which ultimately meant that, yes, the Horn Circus was in town again) - after all that, we found our way home to attempt the photo shoot.

We made it home, but one boy was hungry and crying, one boy wanted out of his church clothes and hid in the closet when I told him he had to wait until after the family photo to change his clothes, and another boy had such bad bedhead that we needed to soak and tame his hair before letting him be in the "we're such a happy missionary family" photo.  Good grief!

Finally - finally! - we pulled ourselves together to take the photo.

All I had to do next was set up the tripod and get the camera ready.  Why don't we just ask someone else to take a photo of us, you might ask?  Because one kid has social anxiety and hates people watching him, which means he has an unfortunate tendency to shy away if not freak out whenever someone else takes a picture of us.  So the tripod it is.  The good thing is that once the camera's in place then I can set it to take multiple photos in a row - click click click click click - and hope that at least one will turn out.  So that's what we did.

And we had a kid pulling up his shirt and showing off his belly, we had another kid picking his nose, and we had all three kids running away before the camera was done clicking because "I want to see it!  I want to see it!"  But, BUT, we also got a few decent photos in the middle of it all.  Eli and I looked at each other afterward and took a deep breath.  Victory!  We wrangled our three boys and made 'em smile and they were even genuine smiles!  Take THAT family photo shoot!

So one more thing can be checked off the list before HMA.  Whew!  And one of these photos will be plastered on a prayer card, coming soon to a church near you :)

Here are a few gems I took afterwards.  I gotta say, for as much as these munchkins give us a run for our money, they sure are cute when they wanna be!