You Want What??? #2

Well, the family photo session has come and gone. Everyone got ready themselves ready for the pictures. I didn't have to lay out their clothes, check their shoes or smooth down their hair. All I had to do was make sure that I didn't have spinach in my own teeth.

The photographer arrived with a friend who was going to assist her in finding the best shots. And for the next two hours or so, we tromped through the farm and picked out favorite places on the property to showcase our wonderfula family. They made us shine in the spotlight of their cameras. And to boot, they were very good natured and put up with all our idiosyncracies. With just a few instructions, we found our poses and tried to look our very best. [I had checked with the photographer if she might be able to PhotoShop me into looking like Cindy Crawford, but she wasn't sure that would work]

Even the dog and the cat and the kittens got involved. Kola followed us out to the field where we sat on the big green marshmallow-shaped hay bales. She came with us to the front porch and tried to help us out by licking our faces clean. She even wanted to get in the action down at the chicken coop. That's where the kittens took over the shots though, so she had to wait in the wings.

There were so many pictures taken, I lost track of them all. Both my husband and I thought of the old days where you had to wait for several weeks to see the proofs. Now it's point, shoot, assess, and delete if you don't like it.
The most fun pictures were the spontaneous ones. Like when my husband almost got hit on the head with a flying window cover as he was demonstrating the pose we should use on the hay ladder. (I really meant for us to have a regular ladder, but then, that wouldn't be our family now, would it! No, we had to weasel our way around the spikes on the hay ladder to find our spots). We laughed as we tried to make our way down the path by the rabbit barn because we couldn't get it together to walk in sync. And one of us was always twisting an ankle on the random sharp-edged rocks we encountered, so that just as we might have had a good shot, it went down the tubes.
In retrospect, maybe wearing black shirts wasn't such a good idea in such a rustic setting. We were covered in hay and other questionable substances by the time we were done. But all were in a good mood.
I am content. The moment has been captured. And now I can replace those generic photos in the frames above our bed with actual family members. "Good bye Billy Sue and Bucky Joe, my adopted children whose faces peered out at me for over a year. Hello my own children and dear husband, who have taught me so much about what it means to carve out family life in our own groove."