My mother bought the children new dress clothes for Christmas, our tree is up and decorated, and professional photographers live right downstairs. Naturally then, it was time to have Christmas portraits taken to send off in the Christmas cards.

As Mama took a few shots to test the light, the excitement simply shimmered around us.

Well, maybe that was actually all those extra lights I put on the tree.

No matter, we are going to take some lovely pictures of our sweet family (whether they like it or not.)

Silas didn’t like it. He complained and protested, but after some co-ercing, he at least consented to be in the pictures as Daddy held him. Unfortunately all his wiggling shifted his daddy’s clothes around enough that he ended up choking Enric.

So we thought maybe if we put the kids down, that might work out better. Bring the ottoman over here so they can sit on it, and we’ll be behind them.

I should have clarified that “over here” meant “anywhere over here that is not on my toe.”

Although it may appear at first glance that I am laughing here, I am actually crying through the pain of a now-broken toenail. (And maybe laughing some, due to the ridiculousness of the situation.) Enric is apologizing (even though it looks suspiciously as though he is laughing too…)

The kids didn’t want to sit on the ottoman anyway.

Getting all four of us looking at the camera at once was proving more difficult than we thought…

…and some of us started getting a little frustrated…

…but in the end we managed to find a moment where we were all happy, composed, sane and looking in one direction to capture a sweet family picture.

But it’s all a lie. :-)

Although probably not for the Christmas card, and certainly not worthy of being called a “portrait,” of all the pictures we took, I think our family is best summed up by the photograph below:

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