In an attempt to take some holiday photos of my kids I decided to put a little more effort into a shoot I did with them. I took a little bit more care in the outfits I put them in, props and distractions. Well let me tell you, it was almost disastrous. My kids have been fighting a cold/cough for almost 2 weeks. Even in the sun, the temperature had dropped drastically that day. This was probably not one of my better ideas.

But in an attempt to show you all that not all my photos turn out as great as I hope, I thought I’d share the shots from this shoot that I will definitely not be using! Honestly, some of them are pretty funny when I look at them. Especially since I was trying so hard.

Bringing only ONE ladder when you have TWO kids? Bad idea.

She had her own ideas on what she wanted to do on/with/over that ladder

The thing about giving them food to keep them calm and distracted? Really excellent my-mouth-is-stuffed shots!! Lots of them.

She’d much rather play with my assistant than stand where I want her to

Balloons on a windy day? Not as pretty as you think. My visions of them floating straight up above the kids? Yeah right. They stayed pretty close to ground level

So many things wrong with this shot. This is SO my Jack-Jack right now. Has to do EXACTLY what Rex is doing

See what I mean about balloons on a windy day?

And after ALL that, did I really think this wasn’t going to happen?? I wish I had a shot of our devastated faces as we all watched our balloons float away. You would think someone died. I’m laughing right now thinking of how ridiculously sad we felt in that moment.

So I bring out books. Something new to fight over. Yay!

Poor kid. I don’t blame him for being upset. She wanted any book he had in his hand. It didn’t matter what it was. I’m pretty sure she’s started doing this on purpose now. Just to piss him off.

After awhile even my fingers were getting numb. So we packed up. She actually wanted to carry this ladder by herself. Yep she probably could have too. She really is that freakishly strong

Seriously though I actually have some pretty awesome ones from this shoot. I’m just not sharing them in this post They’ll probably make it into our Christmas card I send out every year. Want to make sure you get one? Just email me your current snail-mail address fourinthecity (@) gmail . com