Knowing that Fall is one of the busiest times of year for me (and all other portrait photographers), I have no clue why I always decide to take my own family portraits at the same time as practically everyone else!  Are we ALL procrastinators or do we just LOVE the colors of the Fall so much that we’re willing to risk missing that short window of leaf color perfection due to inclement weather or not being able to get an appointment at the last minute?  Lucky for me, I don’t have to worry as much about last minute appointments since I can just keep an eye on the weather forecast and put my family down on my calendar whenever I want!  Even so, I like to save the weekends for my clients and always schedule my own portraits during the week.  This courtesy actually caused me to miss taking my family portraits last year!!  So this year, I was determined to get them done.

Because we had to wait for the kids to get home from school, help them with their outfits, style their hair, travel to the location almost thirty minutes away, and figure out where we were going to shoot because it was my first time at Route 66 State Park (thanks to Shelly S. for suggesting it!), we didn’t have much time to shoot.  Add in a child who can only handle about 15 minutes of portraits and the stress gets even worse!  The candy bribes helped, but not enough to allow us to get our whole family in front of the camera before the sun went down.  I was really disappointed when I realized that we were going to have to go through it all over again just to get the actual family portrait taken.  Someone in the family really didn’t want to go all the way back to Eureka, so I settled for one of my favorite locations, the Missouri Botanical Garden, instead.  You’ll see how all of the portraits are obviously taken in the same location, except the last one!!  The colors are totally different!!  Oh well.  At least we have these memories!  I love them!! 

I took some portraits of my hubby, Brian, with each of the kids, and gave him a collage frame including nine of my favorite images as a Father’s Day present about five or six years ago.  Taliyah had a giant gap in her mouth from all the missing teeth and Leilie was barely a toddler.  All of them look like babies compared to what they look like now!

I never got any of these kinds of images of the kids with me, but thought about them every single year that went by.  I’m so happy that Brian finally captured these moments!!  I was so worried that I would never get them, and that the kids would soon be all grown up.  Thank you my love!!!!!

And here’s our family portrait, taken a couple of weeks later (November 5)!

My Family Portraits! {St. Louis Children’s Photographer}