Family Pictures 2014

On October 25th we finally got around to having pictures taken of our little family. The last time we took "posed" family pictures (via JC Penny) was December 2012 when Olivia was still discretely in my belly. I had been wanting to have a professional photographer take pictures of the family but those critters can be hard to schedule if you aren't already on their client list. Fortunately, I was able to schedule with Shawna Florida Photography (Shawna is a good friend of a friend of mine and has an amazing portfolio) and then the countdown began. I took the advice of my sweet friend, Kristin, and found what I wanted to wear first, then matched the rest of the family to me. They boys were easy and I found Olivia a cute outfit online in the same color family (not as easy). Of course, being in Texas, it was hot on photo-shoot day and my poor Livy-bug was rosy cheeked and glistening by the end (note: girls do not sweat). On the bright side, it was sunny and cool(ish) in the shade and we managed to find a beautiful setting for our pictures - Katy Heritage Park. I had in my mind that I wanted flowers as part of the scenery but we didn't want to haul the kids downtown to the parks in Houston. As documented elsewhere, Olivia is not the happy traveler and I didn't want to be frazzled and upset from an hour car ride before taking pictures.

We took Lolo along for the photo shoot to help corral the kids and try to get smiles out of them. We told Nathan that we would go get ice cream after taking pictures and he only asked about a hundred times, "Is this the last picture? Can we get ice cream?" Poor baby. I told Shawna that all I really wanted was that magical "perfect" shot of all four members of the family looking at the camera and smiling. Thanks to Olivia, who is still a little stingy with her smiles, I didn't get that particular image, but Shawna definitely did not disappoint! She took some amazing pictures and it was so hard to finally decide which ones we wanted to print and put up in the house. The grandmas found it equally as daunting but we all persevered. Included here are some of my favorites.