I try to get nice pictures of the girls every year, both for Christmas cards and just for general “family photo” purposes. Last year, I was a cheapskate and tried to take them myself. It really didn’t turn out so great. And because I was the one taking the pictures, I wasn’t actually in any of the photos.

The year before that, the amazing and talented Laura took pictures of us, and they turned out gorgeous. But Laura has retired her photography business (which I don’t blame her for one bit), so she isn’t an option for us anymore.

This year, I checked with one of my local Facebook moms’ groups, and saw people talking about local photographers. That’s how I found Maria at Mia Bella Expressions, and we set up a date to take pictures this past Saturday.

I’ve only got a “sneak peek” of a few of the pictures so far, I should get the rest later this week, but you guys. They’re amazing.

Catie is at the age where she hates having her picture taken, and when she does smile for the camera, it’s often a fake/forced smile. Lucy is normally a ham for the camera, but she’s shy around new people, so it’s hard to get her smiling and acting like her normal silly self with a photographer she’s never met. Maria was great at getting the girls relaxed and capturing them in that little millisecond when they were both smiling at the same time.

Initially, my plan had just been to get pictures of me and the girls. Then it turned out that Chris was free on Saturday too (which is unusual), so I asked him to come along.

And I’m so glad I did, because pictures like this? That’s basically my whole heart right there.

I mean, look, he’s not their dad. He’s not even their step-dad, because we aren’t married and have no plans to ever get married. To my girls, he’s just Chris, and he fits with us so easily. They both love him, and he loves them. There’s no tricky blended family dynamics for us to sort out, it just… works.

(Side note on that whole “blended family” topic — as far as I can tell, based on what I hear from them, Catie and Lucy also love Dave’s girlfriend and her kids. Which is wonderful. Dave and I have been getting along great lately, and I realize that we co-parent as a team better now than we probably ever have in the past. I love that my kids can see firsthand that, even though their dad and I split up, all of the adults in their lives work together well for their best interests, and that they are loved and supported on all sides. It takes a village, you know?)

The only thing that would’ve made this family photo day better would’ve been if it had worked out so that we could have had Chris’s kids in the photos too. Because that big chunk of his heart is missing here.

Maybe we’ll be able to do a make-up picture date sometime with them. Because it really was so fun, and dammit if kids don’t grow up so fast. It’s nice to have some of those little moments in their lives captured along the way.

And local folks, this is no way a sponsored blog post, but if you need family pictures, you should talk to Maria at Mia Bella Expressions. I could not be happier with the whole experience.

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.