On Saturday, the weather was really mild and nice, and since I figured it might be one of the last nice-weather weekends we get for a while, I took the girls to a local park to try to get their pictures taken for our Christmas card.

I thought about having them done professionally, because I love the pictures Laura took for us last year, but she’s got a new job and is crazy busy, and when I tried to price out other photographers… let’s just say it’s not in the budget this year. (Um, y’all? Do you really spend over $1k on family pics? Seriously? Because OMG.)

So I figured, hey, I don’t need to include a picture of me, I really like the cards that are just photos of the kids, and I have a pretty decent digital camera, so why not? (I also have a really awesome DSLR camera, but I seem to have lost the battery charger for it, so until I can order a new one, looks like I’m stuck with my little point-and-shoot.)

I took close to 150 pictures, and this is how most them turned out.

“Could you guys just sit up and try to look normal?”

Lucy looks cute, Catie is determined to NOT SMILE for the camera.

…Or Lucy has her mouth open.

“Hey, this is great! Can you just stand by the railing and…hey… dang it, Lucy!”

Or, they’re just doing two completely different things. In this case, Catie has gone all Molly Shannon/Superstar on me, while Lucy is daydreaming about clouds.

I also have about 100 pictures of them running away from my camera.

And then there are a few pictures I took, which I really love, even though they aren’t necessarily Christmas card-worthy.

I thought this one of them sitting and talking was really sweet, but you can’t see their faces, so it doesn’t really work.

And I like the “walk through the woods” picture, but again: not exactly what I’d put on a card.

Random side story: when we went to the park, Lucy had this tiny pink unicorn toy that she was carrying around with her. When we left, I realized she’d lost it, but since we’d been all over this enormous park, I had no way to re-trace our steps and try to find it. When I was looking through pictures later, I was like, “Ok, she’s holding the unicorn in this one… and in this one…”

And then:

Damn. Unicorn down! Unicorn down!

We went back to the park the next day to try to look for it, since I had a pretty good idea of where it would be, based on that photo. Unfortunately, the unicorn appears to be gone for good – either he found his final resting place at the bottom of the lake (it was pretty windy on Saturday night) or some other child came along and adopted him. Either way, I think he cost all of $2, so it’s not like it can’t be replaced or is some huge loss for Lucy. But I felt like a detective piecing together a mystery when I spotted him in the picture.

I got a few decent pictures that will hopefully be enough to put together to make a card. We’ll see. I’ve got my coupon codes and I’ll see what I can whip up.

And next year, I might just shell out for professional photos. Because lordy, that was an exhausting way to spend a Saturday afternoon.