family pictures
Christmas in September – But It’s a Dry September
It could be worse. We could be sending out this card. |
I’ve shared with you our practice of taking a family photo for our Christmas cards every year. It’s fun for the whole family. And by whole family I mean me. And by fun I mean not at all fun.
Last year, you saw the result – a picture of three kids with so much hate in their eyes, they would have all gotten a Chia head for Christmas if so much time hadn’t passed before I started shopping.
This year we’re adding another element into an already painful process – triple digit temperatures. We’re having a family photo taken in Phoenix, because it’s where we’ll be during the only 6 hours during which our entire family will be all together in the same room/parking lot/restaurant/hotel lobby/desert canyon for the next year.
It will be the end of September and we may have to Photoshop out the squiggly lines of radiating heat coming up from the ground. Some poor sucker is going to draw the Santa hat straw. We may have to prop each other up. We may have to pack our feet in ice. But we’re taking a family picture because that’s what we do.
When the kids were little, before the inventions of digital photography and a work ethic at Walgreens, it used to take weeks to get photo Christmas cards made. It took me more weeks to get the envelopes addressed and write little notes in each one. (“Come visit! We’re bored silly with one another!”) So we took the Christmas card photo in late summer. You’ve seen those age enhanced photos of missing children? I toyed with the idea of age-enhancing my kids’ faces because they were nearly unrecognizable by the time people received our card in December.
I’d dress the kids up in sweaters and once we even got a fire going in the fireplace. If there was a baby that year, he screamed from wearing wool. If there was a toddler, he cried because we had to tell him that no, Santa isn’t coming tonight. Pay no attention to those stockings hanging behind you. They go right back into the closet after this photo session. We’re going to the pool as soon as I peel the double-knit and Velour off of our skin.
For this year’s photo, we probably won’t be able to lug along our tripod, so some poor Phoenician is going to have to do the honors. If you’re reading this and are going to be in Arizona between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. that day, look for us: We’ll be the ones in the red and green sweaters and scarves.
Portrait of a Family
I’m going to get a bad rep for stealing blog ideas from other, funnier and more specialized bloggers. I can’t help it, though. I just have to post these Awkward Family Photos from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.
This blog site has lots of funny pictures, some candid shots and some of just ugly people, which I don’t find as funny as these posed studio shots. What Olan Mills from hell were they at?
Before you accuse me of making fun of people, let me assure you I’ve got a few of my own family that could qualify for prize winners on this Web site. My church used to put out a photo directory every year and we would get dressed up and go into the bride’s room, where a photographer had set up equipment and we’d pose in front of a faux painted, blue leather-look screen. You couldn’t win with those photos. Even attractive people looked unprepared, embarrassed, and a little bit like they had eaten some bad hamburger.
Here are some doozies from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.
When Dad is a priest in shorts, Junior is matricidal, and Sissy just watches as Mom gets strangled, better get a picture of that.
These boys have driven Mom to exhaustion. And driven Dad to sporting a Hitler mustache.
“Mom, Dad, uh, we’re right here, you know.”
If you think these people exaggerated their hair for their family portrait in 1984 . . .
. . . check out their family portrait in 1985.
In case there was any doubt that Ryan and Chelsea had been replaced by the new baby, there’s a picture to prove it.
Ack! Bwaghhhh! *choke* Argh! When the baby is born, it goesimmediately to foster care. That is, if this girl is pregnant. She is pregnant, isn’t she? Please tell me she’s pregnant.
And you thought tacky family photos were invented in the 1970s!
Dr. Evil and Mr. Biggelsworth grew out their hair and started families.
What, one of you couldn’t be Christopher Robin?
Where are the parents? No, not in the photo; I mean where are the parents?