Yesterday we took family photos. It was our first time as a family of 6 getting our pictures taken, and boy oh boy was it an event to remember. My husband is working a few night shifts this week at the hospital, so I thought it would be the perfect time for us to schedule a photo shoot. Well, it sounded good at first, until Darren got sick, but he is a trooper and said the “shoot must go on.”
So, let me start from the beginning, our photos were at 4:00 pm on Thursday, about 24 hours before that, 4:00 pm on Wednesday I realized I had been working to get 4 of my children to have nice clothing that didn’t clash, and a complimentary outfit for my husband to wear, that I COMPLETELY forgot about me! (Does that happen to any other mommas out there?) I gave a quick call to my fabulous friend Stephanie, who co-owns this super cute pop up boutique clothing shop (Poppy Rose). She came to my rescue and brought me a BAG of clothing to choose from. Crisis averted!
The day of, we did homeschooling in the morning, lunch, baths and then naps! (WE WERE ON FIRE!) We were feeling great, everyone was clean and everyone had pooped. Yes, I said pooped, I can tell you I get so excited when my kids poop at home, especially when we are heading out to go somewhere because I can 95% guarantee that they won’t need to go when we are out. (Not talking about Jesse the newborn, he poops ALL day!)
This mommy even had time to get myself all did up :). I also had the time to put “make-up” aka concealer on Madeline’s upper lip, since the night before Madeline fell HARD and split her lip and bruised her upper lip. (GREAT TIMING RIGHT… not!)
So we get everyone up, dressed, including a bib on Jesse to keep his clothing nice before pictures and we get them all loaded into the van. We start driving to our photo location, on time and feeling amazing!
We arrive at this beautiful park, with a field, and near a river, so beautiful! I get out of the front seat and get the older kiddos out of their carseats as Darren gets baby, Jesse, out of his carseat. The minute my sweet, CLEAN boys get out of the van, I no more then look away for two second, then when my eyes return to my sweetie pies they are making pies, DIRT pies. YES, they are sitting in the dirt and proudly showing me their creations. So, I do what any loving mother of boys does, I quickly and passionately encourage them to get UP!
‘Deep breath,’ I tell myself, ‘the pictures will just reflect real life, this is totally normal.’ I breath in and breath out, and hear, “Babe, I need you.” I turn to my trooper of a sick husband and see that our baby Jesse has spit up all over his own clothing. See Darren had just taken the bib off Jesse so he would be ready for pictures. (Just like babies know when you sit down and they start crying because the elevation change, they also know right when you take their bibs off and they take the opportunity to spit up.) We clean up Jesse and I just pray it will be warm enough to dry the now wet shirt before pictures begin.
MY fabulous photographer friend Velvet shows up and we gather ourselves together to go take pictures. The older 3 kiddos come with me to say hi to my beautiful friend Velvet and Darren heads to lock the van up. We turn to walk to meet Darren, all the kids are by my side. I see Darren pull the van door to close it and lock it so we can go take pictures. Then as if my world went into SLOW motion, I see out of the corner of my eye, Jonah start to head towards Darren. I think to myself, ‘there is no way he will make it to Darren before the van door closes.’ I was wrong! At the very, very, very last second when the door has like 1 cm to go, Jonah sticks is sweet baby fingers into the door. I scream, Jonah screams! We all run to him and pull the van door to open it just as we remember it is locked! Darren holding Jesse, gives him to me quickly, runs around the other side of the van as he is reaching into his pocket to grab the keys and quickly unlocks the van and rip open the door!
After many loves and snuggles my tough cookie of a little boy recovered! Praise God it was Jonah, the only one of my kiddos who would never recover from such an event and still be able to go and take pictures.
SO we begin … Velvet being AMAZING works so well with our whole family. We start in the field and then proceed to go take some pictures by the river. In the middle of taking our pictures by the river, I smelled a smell. This smell is a smell I smell everyday. In fact, I had already smelled this smell only hours before the photo shoot. YES! You guessed it: Poop! UGH! I swore that no one would have to go, since EVERYONE went earlier in the day, but atlas I was wrong, Jonah had proved me wrong!
We called it good, with confidence that Velvet (BEING AMAZING) had gotten at least one family shot. My family was done; dirty, poopy, and injured.
The following day Velvet sent me this:
I cried. I couldn’t believe it! We did it! We got at least 1 family photo of 6! Velvet is amazing and this is only a preview, there is MORE coming! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! I am so happy!
Thank you Velvet with Velvet Flare Photography!
