The Best Made Plans... Well, You Know The Rest.

This past winter I had the brilliant idea to get some pics taken of all of the grandkids to give to our parents for Christmas.  I know that none of us are as good as we should be at getting pictures taken, printed, handed out, etc., and my parents often complain that they don't have anything to frame or show off.  I knew this would be a great hit for them.

I started trying to plan this in September.  My 2 sisters and I all live in the same town but my brother lives about 3 hours away so we would have to find a time that we could all be in the same place without our parents (who live in the same area as my sisters and I) knowing something was up with my brother's family being around.  My brother coaches football so his first answer was: anytime after football season.  So that took us to November.  Also, his 3 kids and my older sisters 2 kids are involved in a crazy amount of sports and activities, and my 2 little girls are just starting to get into that kind of thing as well so planning around all of their weekend sports and activities proved to be a HUGE challenge.  We wanted to do an outdoor shoot but not have it be "Christmas-y" so the pictures would be more timeless to display all year round.  Planning for an outside photo shoot in Ohio in the fall or winter, or any time of year, really, is a crapshoot.  This whole thing was proving near impossible. 

The funny thing is, my mom is my biggest confidant and I see her almost every day.  She would often catch me in a state of total frazzled-ness from dealing with one of my siblings or from trying to find just the right outfits for my kids or whatever and would ask why I was so stressed and I kept making up excuses as to why.  LOL

Finally we had a date worked out, the first Sunday in December, but a few days before our scheduled visit with the photog my nephew had a hockey game rescheduled and we were really under the gun to get our session rescheduled.  We somehow managed to work it out for the following Sunday, giving the photographer less than a week to get everything together and get back to us with at least a CD of the pics that we could print from before our family Christmas that next Saturday.

Everything was set.  I worked hard planning this right down to the color scheme, and with my own kids that included everything right down to their hair bows.  I was very excited not only to do this for my parents but also to have some great professional pics of my kids, something I've never done before.

Then that Saturday before our pics it started raining.  Like all day raining.  And snow was predicted for the night and next day.  We had actually had a very nice fall and any weekend for about the previous 6 weeks would have worked out pretty well.  It hadn't really snowed yet and the rain we did get was hit or miss  and the weather had been fairly mild.  Not this time though.  It rained nonstop for about 24 hours.  The temperature dropped about 40 degrees over that Saturday night.  Then, just as we were leaving early Sunday morning it started snowing.  Like, really snowing.  By the time we got to the shoot location (which the photographer maintained we shouldn't change because she was sure we could work around it) the ground had about 3" of snow on it and the snow was still coming down. 

My girls, who my younger sister and I had painstakingly made sure had perfect hair that morning, were quickly looking as if they had spent the morning, well, in a snowstorm.  They were in dresses and it was cold and they were really getting unhappy.  Both of my girls tend to be hams and love to have their pictures taken but that morning it was obvious that in addition to everything else Olivia wasn't feeling well, and with the snow and the cold and her being tired from getting up so early, she wasn't having it.  And then Brody.  Ugh.  My sweet, adorable, handsome Brody who is always smiley and happy started screaming unless I was holding him.  And I wasn't going to be in most of the pics so that was a problem.  And soon, he was even crying if I was holding him if it looked like the photographer was getting anywhere near us.

My kids totally fell apart.  I fell apart.  I actually started crying I was so stressed and overwhelmed and upset about the whole thing.  My sisters were telling me that it would be fine and the pics would turn out great and our parents would love them no matter what.  True.  But all of the other kids were going to look amazing.  My kids were going to look cold, sick, tired, mad, and quite literally.. snotty.

I finally gave in to the failure and just went with it.  I wasn't thrilled but I figured there wasn't much I could do at that point.  As the shoot went on (admittedly it went much faster than planned because the poor photog was trying to work as quickly as possible so we could all get warm again) my kids looked worse and worse.  Well, Olivia and Brody did, Ava actually held up pretty well. 

The pictures came back and... I was disappointed I have to admit.  My nieces and nephews had some amazing, beautiful shots and I was envious of that.  My kids pictures were a little, well... less beautiful.  LOL.  They were still amazingly cute and adorable because they are beautiful kids and that's hard to miss even when they looked so upset and sick but they weren't exactly what I was hoping for. 

But I quickly got used to them and realized that even though they were slightly less than perfect, they were still pretty amazing.  My kids are little and the day was pretty hard for them but they were troopers and did the very best they could.  We're going to have a reshoot this spring because the photographer, such a sweetie, felt so bad about our snowstorm shoot.  :)  Hopefully my kids will fare better then!! 

I haven't yet put any pics on my blog so hopefully I can make this work.... LOL.  Here are a few of the pics from the day.  Mine are the littlest 3 and the rest are my nieces and nephews.  I'm including also a pic of Ava and my her wonderful Aunt Lindsey because Ava was the only one who would pose for anything at all and this cute little shot turned out to be one of my faves from the day.  :)