Family Pictures + Outtakes

This is the best family picture we could get. 

Nice pictures are tough these days for several reasons.

1) Charlotte NEVER.HOLDS.STILL.  For every 300 good pictures I have of Will, Charlotte has one.  And even the one is a little blurry.  She is always on the move, always making a funny face or on to the next thing.  We have a mover and a shaker on our hands, people.

2) Both Will AND Charlotte are too little to manage smiling nicely, holding still, looking at the camera, AND not picking their nose at the same time.  Think about it.  That is a LOT for a little kid to handle.

3) We never wear nice clothes.  I stay at home with the kids and we tend to be homebodies, so most days, there's really no reason to dress nicely, let alone wear a full set of clothes.  30% of the time, my kids are half naked (ask the neighbors).  Another 30% of the time, they are wearing their dinner or snack or magic marker or play-dough remains.  Yet another 30% of the time, they are in ill-fitting, clothes that don't even match because WHY would I dress them in anything else given the thing I mentioned earlier about wearing their dinner...  The other 10% of the time, we are either at church and dressed appropriately (and barely made it, so who has time to take a picture?), or ONE of us is dressed nicely and the others are grubbing out.  (Mark is the worst "grubbing out" offender, for the record.)

4) I don't try very hard.  I know professional photographers exist.  I know I have that option.  But to be totally honest, I kind of like the messy photos of our everyday life.  I even love the outtakes.  Our crazy, un-frameable pictures reflect what life really looks like for us, the crap we really wear, how we really smile at each other and interact in this season.  Although I think professional photography is a worthy investment and when I see your professional photos online I sometimes get jealous, I just don't care enough to spend the money right now.  Maybe in another season?

For now, this one picture (out of at least 452 I already deleted) will do.  It represents the 4.8% of the time we're actually dressed nicely at the same time.  I will rely on my 20,467 low-quality iPhone pics to remind me of the rest of our crazy, messy, beautiful lives.