Family Portraits

The first week of January we drove out to Ripon, Ca (about an hour and a half away) to take some family photos with Kree (http://www.kreephotography.com), who had done our "newborn" photos when the babies were just four weeks old.  We had attempted to work out a time in August to get together, but between her pregnancy and Caroline's irritation at travelling long distances, we had to reschedule and January was the first time that worked for all six of us!  Luckily, Caroline did much better on the trip now that she's in a forward-facing car seat.  We met Kree at a state park - we were the only folks there in the chilly January air, but it was actually sunny and almost warm, so things worked out well.  

First, we sat down on a log in front of a patch of trees and Kree "overshot" taking a zillion pictures in hopes that a few of them would result in five smiling faces looking forward.

Next, we moved to a blanket by a tree, overlooking the river behind us.  We were pretty near the edge, and it was a little terrifying, which may show just a bit in some of these pictures.

We packed everything up and moved to a more wide-open meadow area for some photos using Kree's RadioFlyer wagon, but the Teenies were not interested in sitting all together in the wagon:

Caroline started to cry at this point, so I pulled her out of the wagon to calm her down - allowing us to take some Mommy-Daughter pictures.

Joe and the boys were trying to keep up with us.

Then it was time for our Halloween pictures.  We swapped out Max's adorable monkey costume for a bear in the hopes of getting a Lions and Tigers and Bears - oh my! photo.  But it was late in the day and everyone was whining at this point.  Plus, Caroline HATES wearing anything on her head, including her lion hat!

So there was no way she'd keep it on and wait for Max and Daniel to get dressed.  We opted for individual pictures.  Max went next.  There were big bear feet that came with the costume, but we were happy he got into this much of it and didn't push our luck.

Then, Daniel, who was really the most calm and composed through the whole day of photos and looks the most comfortable in them now that I review the album.

And through the wonders of digital editing (and Kree's considerable talents), those individual shots rendered this for us:

The last thing on our wish list was a barefoot picture of the babies to mirror the one we'd taken when they were just four weeks old.

Here's the original, for reference:

Now the problem is deciding WHICH family photo to blow up and frame on the wall!