Family Photos

For the first time since Reese was born we finally got around to having family pictures taken.  If truth be told, we tried this about three years ago when Reese had just turned one, but Callie wanted nothing to do with it.  So this time around we bribed both of the girls with candy and silly string, bought a couple of cute dresses, and headed out to the UK Arboretum.  We had high hopes but it was a cold and grey day, so we didn't know how things would turn out.

The goal of the photo shoot was to get at a minimum, one family photo for our Christmas card and potentially something we could hang up in our house. The photography we hired for the job was named Tracy, and she turned out to be great. The girls warmed up to her quickly and she had a lot of good ideas. Fortunately, the Arboretum also has a lot of great options for backgrounds and general scenery. Callie has been having to appease her parents for the past seven years to take pictures and she did a great job.  On the other hand, Reese was giving it her best shot to ensure she would get the promised treats in the end.

This did not end up as our Christmas card photo, but it was definitely in the running.  Although it was fall the Arboretum was still displaying a variety of colors that made some of the spots look like spring.  Here we did our best to appear to be your average Lexington family caught strolling through the garden on a fall day.  Some of us did a better job than others of looking casual.

This is one of Sarah's favorite photos, John caught between his two girls.  Callie and Reese also enjoyed getting the chance to stand up on the bench and be taller than their Dad for a change.

As we alluded to earlier, Reese did her best to cooperate so that she could have fun with the silly string and eat some candy when all the photos were done.  However, she has some work to do before her photo smile looks as natural as her true impish grin.  Still, this is a pretty cute picture of her.  It's always amazing when we can capture an image of her standing still.

So after about 50 minutes of posing and smiling, it was time to reward the girls for their efforts.  Out came the silly string and the game was on.  For better or worse John was the chosen target for most of the string, but he didn't mind too much.  The bigger issue was having to pick up the silly string off the ground so that we did not conclude our photo shoot with littering.