Family Photos 2016

Seems like just yesterday we were taking our family photos in our backyard at our old house (see here)--this year we took them in the backyard of our new house. We don't even live in the farmhouse yet, but we pretended we did last night. Copying my mother-in-law who expertly brought dinner for us at the farm the other night, I brought a folding table, extra chairs, a pumpkin spice candle, blankets, my rice cooker, my crockpot with chicken enchiladas, and some store bought cookies. Chris started a fire in our fireplace and it almost felt homey among the rubble of sawdust, drywall crumbles, and hanging electric wires. I'm sure Ceci agreed as she sat strapped to her stroller the entire time to avoid all the exposed nails all over the floor.

We got there at 5 and finished most of the pictures right away. Met our charming neighbor who stopped by to push the remote control button a couple times for us, and then settled in for a couple of hours of working. The kids are acclimating to country life a little too quickly. They played outside until it was too dark to see and came home covered in dirt, grass, and enough energy to keep me up all night.

This past weekend my parents came out to help with the house. Chris's parents helped again too. I got a lot of great photos of the wallpaper tearing party we had. And then I promptly deleted my ENTIRE photo library last night in an attempt to make space for uploading our new family photos. I assure you I did not realize what I was doing. I would explain to you how this happened but it would just make me look even more like an idiot (yes, that's possible). You ask why I didn't just recover it all from trash? Well, I permanently deleted it all from trash too. This is one time when I'm so grateful I've posted so many pictures on social media, because hopefully the best of what I had in my library is floating around somewhere on Facebook, Instagram, or this blog.

And without further adieu, here are some of the shots from last night (saving the best family shot for our Christmas card, of course).  

He kept posing like this - he didn't want a "smile" picture since he's a manly almost-ten-year-old now.