Family Pictures Evaluation

A few weeks ago we finally got our family pictures taken on a chilly, windy September morning at a nearby park. It went okay. Unfortunately the Indian summer that we enjoyed over the past few weeks hadn't arrived yet, and the chill in the air made me have to change the outfits I was planning (which was unfortunate for my outfit especially!), and the wind made my hair look bad or nonexistent in some pictures. The boys were much more interested in running around and playing than in having their pictures taken, which made getting good shots a challenge for our talented photographer, although she got a lot of cute candids of them playing. These are a few of my favorites of the boys:

(I really wish I knew how to do photo mosaics or how to get two or three pictures to line up next to each other. I've tried and failed at this a number of times! Oh well.)

But onto the actual family pictures that feature all four of us. When the photographer told me that she had posted some of her favorites from our shoot on her website and when I went onto the site to look at them and none of them featured Peter or I, that was my warning that either our boys are just really super-cute or Peter and I are really not super-cute. I'm thinking it's more the latter of those two options.

My main desire for these pictures was to get at least one good one that we could use for our Christmas cards and to display somewhere in our home. Did we succeed? I think so, although none of them really knock my socks off, but I also tend to be an unobjective perfectionist and am overly critical of myself as a result. Anyway, what do you think?

This one is nice except for the fact that John is practically sticking his butt in my face.

This is one of my favorite shots. Which do you prefer, the color above or the black-and-white below? (Please let me know--I want opinions! And tell me if there's another one that you like more.)

These ones could have been really nice but I tilted my head at a very odd angle in most of them (I'm not posting those ones!) and the images are not as clear.

My hair is blowing away in this one but other than that I like it.

We were attempting to appease Sam, who was trying to break loose and run away, which would have been bad, because we were sitting on a bridge.

So overall I'm happy with how they turned out. I'm already planning on getting our pictures done again next year, because I definitely want to do it again and try for that golden shot that I have pictured in my mind.

These are my goals for next year's pictures:

1. The boys will be more cooperative. (They'll be more mature at ages seven and three, right?) 

2. I will wear a better outfit. (Although in my defense, like I said before, I had a nicer one planned, but I would have been too cold wearing it and I'm a wimp when it comes to being cold!)  

3. My hair will look better.

4. Peter will weigh a lot less. (He's working on it!)  

5. We will get our pictures done with a colorful old barn and a cornfield as backdrops. This is Iowa, after all!

*More pictures from this photo shoot to come in another post! There are some nice ones of me with the kids that are my favorites from the whole shoot.