This year my mother-in-law specifically requested family photos. She bought outfits, set a date, picked a location. We even dragged my sister along to be our stand-in photographer so that I could be in a few shots for once. It was both beautifully planned and destined to be a complete disaster. It took about 3.5 seconds to completely unravel once we got to the beach. It was “too hot” and “too bright” and there were rocks that needed climbing on, tantrums that needed to be thrown and kids that outright refused to participate (mine, of course). Good times!

We managed to get a few semi-decent shots of my husband and I and the boys (if you ignore the fact that Lucas is doing some sort of limp, hanging thing, and both boys look like they have no legs below the knees. Whatever. I’m just going to pretend not to notice!)

We tried to get all five cousins to sit for a shot:

If you can count then you can gauge how well that worked out.

Other than a few shots of my in-laws and of my husband and his brother, that’s about the best of the family photos.

All in all our vacation was great and, surprisingly enough, the weather was nearly perfect. Mostly I drank and lay on the beach and ate and read magazines and drank and ate. In between stuffing my face with candy and ice cream and knocking back cases of Blue Moon (hey, it’s my vacation), I dragged out the ‘ol camera here and there for a few snapshots. Next year I’ll try harder. Maybe.

So, when I got the bright idea to take the kids down to the Wooster Square and try to get some shots of them while the cherry blossoms were in bloom, I didn’t really have high hopes. What little hope I had left was completely crushed as we pulled up to the park and there was one single, solitary cherry blossom tree still in bloom. Also, in the five minutes it took to find a parking space I must have heard the word “boring” at least fifty times from the back seat. Apparently I forgot to clarify that the park we were going wasn’t THAT kind of park.

I swear, all of these shots were taken on the sidewalk about six inches from where we parked the car. Once we were in the actual park and there was room to run I knew it would be all over, so I grabbed what little opportunity I had and made the best of it. I won’t lie -there were a lot of outtakes (an embarrassing amount, really), many promises of italian ice, and maybe a lot of a little yelling. But, look! I finally got a few decent pictures of my kids!