I finally decided to take the easy way out.  Instead of taking the whole family out on location for portraits this year, I took advantage of my favorite spot in our backyard.  I thought this would be much easier than planning ahead considering it has rained or been dark and grey on our family portrait day for the last two years.  I love that we have a giant white reflector (a fence) on the east side of our yard that lights up our children’s sweet, angelic, little faces as the sun sets in the west behind them, so I was excited to run outside for a few minutes of good ol’ fashioned portrait fun.  What could be better?  Ha ha ha….  Well, it’s very easy for me to make other people’s children laugh and have a good time getting their pictures taken while their parents stress out and worry that their kids are misbehaving too much.  However, when it comes to my own children, it takes a lot of energy and determination for me to survive a photo shoot with them.  The first two and half minutes start off great, and then it’s downhill from there!  Here are a few shots I captured within the short amount of time they gave me before they all started crying because I was, apparently, torturing them to death.  Since this was a total whim, I didn’t really spend much time coordinating their outfits, but I’m not going to be picky.

I love, love, love the lighting and the beautiful backgrounds in their individual portraits!!

Here they are having fun just before they all started getting bitten by mosquitoes…

And these were actually taken after I resorted to threatening to ground them from the computer for many days because they were out of control and wouldn’t just stand together for a measly few seconds so I could get one good photo of the three of them together.  My desperate threat only caused them to scream and cry so I quickly had to pretend like I was just joking to get them to calm down.  I’m so much better with other people’s children when it comes to portrait sessions!  I really don’t know how I can capture approximately 70 joyful images of everyone else’s kids and only 7 of my own, but I guess it’s better than nothing!