I would have rather had nice pictures than a blog post.

A while ago I lamented about my boring Dining wall. I appreciated your comments, particularly the idea to paint my own picture (thanks Sarah - I do want to do that sometime!), but I ended up going in a slightly different direction. I've also for a while wanted to have more pictures of our family up and about, that date from more recently than my wedding day, seeing as we've added three members to our family since then. Also, I like to pretend that I take half-way decent point-and-shoot pictures, and wanted to display them in more areas than the hard drive of my computer.

I came up with a design for a collage of photographs - eleven in total, that will hang on the empty wall. I have the mats bought, and now just need to buy the frames and pick the pictures. The frames will be from thrift stores, which I'll then paint green. I knew I wanted to include Guinevere with the pictures, though, and so wanted to wait and take some cute pictures after she was born. Months ago I decided that the last day my Mom would be here and visiting would be the best time, since Guinevere would be the oldest then, and my Mom could help corral the kids. Avram doesn't enjoy doing photo shoots, so this would let him get out of it as well.

There seems to be some weird glitch in me, so that I can't abide the thought of taking my kids to a store and paying for someone to take their pictures. It's not the money, per se, since I can imagine paying my sister who does pictures to do the same thing. Regardless, the last real formal pictures taken of my kids was when I only had one kid, and she was a year old (by that same sister. Number of times we've been to 'professionals' equals zero.) So to me, because I'm weird, these pictures are the official newborn pictures of Guinevere, and the girls yearly four and two year old photos all rolled into one.

I've spent months thinking about, in the spare corners of my life, how great these pictures would be. I knew we'd got to a local garden park here in Columbus, where there are always a nice picture background. I knew what I would dress the girls in, and how I would do their hair. This last Monday dawned cloudy and not too hot - perfect for picture taking (although it was massively humid, but you can't have everything.) We spent the morning leisurely getting ready with clothing and hair, and finally headed out there close to lunch time.

First, there were gnats everywhere, who seemed to be particularly attracted to Elisheva. As well ants were running amok on the stone wall the girls were sitting on, and the girls were back-lit and appeared in shadow.

The black dot underneath Elisheva's eye is no beauty mark.

As well, there was the usual assortment of "huh?" expression from the girls.

So then we moved to a bench, where the girls wouldn't settle down from weird expressions.

Then, only ten minutes into the photo shoot, when we hadn't even pulled out Guinevere's clothes yet, nor dressed her (she was feeling rather urpy that morning, and we didn't want spit up all over the pictures), the heavens opened, and the rain came pouring down.
I only managed three photos of Guinevere, and they all about looked like this one
(The nice black section is my camera's lens cover, which got stuck from the rain, and couldn't open all the way on its own. Thankfully once it dried out, all was good again). Guinevere never did even make it into her outfits planned for the photo shoot. After the rain had stopped, we gave up and went home. The girls were starving, and although we'd brought sandwiches for lunch, all of the benches were soaked, and so there was no real place to eat.

I guess some things just weren't meant to be - like classy photos of my family. So, if you're ever wondering what to get me for Christmas, please, give me some pictures of my kids. But, don't just give me money, or a coupon or whatnot. I think you'll have to secretly kidnap them, cutify them yourself, and then go and get a professional to take their pictures. Otherwise, we're going to have photos like this one our wall the rest of our lives.