End of year family photos

Behind a camera lens I feel at home.  But in front of a camera?  Not a bit.  It just doesn't feel natural to me to be in front of the camera.  In order to ensure the girls know I was not only "taking" their photos but also there "participating" in the everyday and events that I found worth photographing, I've made an effort to make sure I'm in more photos in 2013 than in years past.  And I'm glad I did!

Sometimes the photos were taken by others or by Julia who is showing quite a bit of interest and promise in photography.  Other times I just put the camera on self-timer and had it snap away.  If Emma was in any of those self-timer shots she would go into fits of laughter.  I love when she has fits of laughter so I did that lots!

Christmas morning we took our annual photo after the opening of the presents.  It's a little top centered (because I had limited time for the girls to stay put before playing with their new presents) but I love it.  I love seeing the progression year over year of the girls under the tree and am glad Chris and I are in the photo.  Taking our family "fresh off opening presents moment" photo is a Christmas morning tradition I treasure.

This year we had our family photo taken at a photo studio.  It's been a few years since we had our family portrait taken and it felt like the time was right.  The girls had a lot of fun, but BOY is it stressful getting everyone up and ready and to the studio to have the photo taken.  Now I remember why it had been so many years between photos :-)

And this year I had our Christmas card include a photo of all of us together.  Here is the photo from that card.  I tried to scan the card and post here but it doesn't come out nicely so you are getting the card photo and just imagine the peace, love & joy message printed across it.

And there is a snapshot of how my efforts of documenting our family presence this Christmas season worked out.  I think it's going well and I expect to continue my efforts into 2014.  Life goes by so very quickly and it's nice to see photos of us all together throughout the years.  Plus, I'm not getting any younger and might as well get photos in before all my wrinkles start to show :-)