annual.

So like everyone else, and their dog we decided the end of the current annual was a good opportunity to immortalize the present state of our family.  Also, I'm trying to be better about this, because we once went four years without taking family pictures.  And it was just Hannah and Carter as babies then suddenly Ethan is four.  Whoops.
I always feel really excited about taking family pictures until we are actually in the process of taking them.  Then I feel really stressed.  Photographing 4 littles is kind of an experience, especially when Ava decides two minutes into it that having her picture taken in the middle of a barren orchard really offends her, and she doesn't want anyone to see what her pretty dress looks like, she just wants to be wrapped in her soft lamby blanket and go back to sleep, thank you.  Then the other littles decided that they were really excited about  the mud that we almost never have in Arizona, because of course it rained the day before. This led me to feel like what I thought our pictures would look like wasn't going to happen and that made me tense and once mom gets tense the whole operation falls apart.  (This is a universal truth.)
Anyways, after about ten minutes of trying (unsuccessfully) to get us all behaving properly in one picture, and since I am wildly opposed to that whole creepy face replacement Photoshop trick, we went for trying to get one shot with all of us simultaneously not smiling.  Ironically that was a lot easier to get.  Once I let go of that obsessive need to have everything be perfect, and just let everyone be who they are and act like themselves, things got a lot more fun. I kind of love these, with all their imperfections and how they sort of capture us and how our life is right now.  
     
And sitting here typing this I just realized that I think I just found my mantra for the coming year.  Let it be.

Sounds like a good one to me, plus I've already got the theme song.

Thanks Sir Paul.

and yes.  those are handcuffs Ethan is holding.

don't ask.