I love pictures, I love kids, but taking pictures with kids can drive me crazy.  Add the fact that I like to send entire family photos for our Christmas card and picture taking becomes a dreaded event in the house.  I don’t ask for much: just that everyone look forward with their eyes open and a huge smile on their face.  Easy with seven people, right?

My kids don’t seem to cooperate as often as I would like.  THANK GOD for digital cameras.  Seriously, how did people take pictures before we had these?  I remember taking pictures of a baby once, like about 5 rolls, and maybe two pictures were good.  TWO freaking pictures.  And I had to pay to get all of them developed to find out that only TWO pictures came out.  And it wasn’t even pictures of my kid!

Really, I don’t have any advice, I just wanted to post more pictures of the kids!  Okay, I do have one word of advice: the first picture taken is generally going to be the best.  Very seldom do pictures get better.  I know this, and still, I had my sister-in-law take almost five hundred pictures of my family a couple of years ago.  What was I thinking?  She hadn’t married Mike yet, so maybe she was sucking up to the family?  I can imagine she had some nasty thoughts about me afterwards though.

Almost all there...

What is the rule? Look at the camera!

Kids completely distracted

Ditch the small one and just smile!

I'm trying to capture her smile and the cute outfit.

No smile still.

Do we call this a smile?

Love the baby lip.

And we're done with pictures.

I guess the only other thing I can say is to know when to cut your losses!