the best family pictures look like this...

As I'm playing catch up on the blog and going through pictures from the past few months, I came across these from February. It was right after church and we had taken our dinner to the backyard for a picnic. Ryan was the only who managed to change fully out of his clothes, Lincoln had stripped his pants off, and I was still fully dressed most likely because I was running around trying to get everything ready to take outside so I could hurry and eat. You go three hours without eating and suddenly you're starving and have to stuff your face RIGHT AWAY!!! THERE'S NO TIME TO CHANGE!!!

Anyway, I remember grabbing the camera to take a few pictures and I set up the timer to get a family photo. But any parents who have tried to get everyone to cooperate, look at the camera, AND smile all at the same time, knows it is a huge success to get one single decent photo.

I decided last second to pull Simon out of his chair so I'm working on that almost every picture and we didn't get one of us all posed before the timer ran out. But as I went through them, I thought, "This is my beautiful family. This is how I want to remember these moments by." Not fighting my kids to smile perfectly for the camera, but just real moments, un-posed, although mostly chaotic, but my family sure is beautiful, aren't they? :) I think so.

You know what's really funny? Looking back at a picture after finding out shortly after that you were pregnant then, but just didn't know it yet. Yep, 2 weeks and 1 day later I found out I was pregnant. :)