Family Picture Blues

At about the time school starts, our department newsletter gurus ask for summer vacation stories. I’m usually happy to submit mine. Last summer (yes, 2012) was no different, and we’d had a fabulous two-week family vacation to Colorado, so I did a write-up and submitted a few of my favorite snapshots. When the newsletter came out, I was happy to see my story was one of the ones picked to run, until a close friend said, “Julie, do you realize you are not in a single one of these pictures?” She was right. I hadn’t even realized it, but in that entire two weeks, we had not gotten even ONE picture with all 5 of us in it. Usually I was behind the camera, but sometimes one of the boys was the one snapping the pics.

This summer, I vowed, would be different. We took a week-long trip to visit my parents in Galveston. And while I got TONS of fabulous pictures between the half-dozen shutterbugs we had down there, this is the only shot I have that all 5 of us are in.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love this picture as a snapshot of family fun time, but for 4/5 of the family, it’s a shot of the top or back of the head.

A few weeks later, Bryan, Sam and I took a trip to Colorado (sadly, the big boys couldn’t join us for this one) and we managed to get ONE picture of the three of us on one or our hikes. It’s adorable, and I love it, but it’s not a full family picture.

Imagine my *slight* panic when we got a request from Sam’s teacher for a picture of our house (okay, that one’s not hard) and a picture of our family for an art project they were going to be doing. What was I going to submit? Not the professional shots we had done just after Sam turned ONE (he’s 3.5 now), and not the silly beach shot where you can’t see anyone’s faces. When Sam asked about the pictures for his class and I had to tell him we didn’t have any yet, he cried. Talk about feeling like a horrible Mommy!

Thankfully, my big boys’ mom came to the rescue. At the next baseball game she snapped a picture of the five of us together with her phone and sent it to me. School art project crisis averted – this time.

Do you find you have a hard time getting full-family pictures? What are your tricks for all-family snapshots, or do you opt for professional pictures at certain intervals?