'12 Christmas Photo Shoot

Almost every year I pick out gorgeous Christmas dresses for the girls to wear and the girls HATE them. To them, it is much more important that the dresses don't have "itchies" than that they look beautiful. In order to avoid that this year, we took all the kids shopping with us. It was fun - for them anyway :) I prefer shopping with just a few kids instead of 6. I think Rob felt like a ranch hand having to wrangle the 5 that weren't with me picking out their outfit. At least Laura isn't mobile yet!

We decided to stick with a color scheme instead of worrying about matching dresses. This year we chose black and white with red highlights. Beth and Megan ended up picking out matching dresses (they both wanted the butterfly necklace that came with the dress). Eva wanted Laura's dress to match hers and since Laura couldn't care less at the moment, we complied. Kylie picked out a cute dress that she ended up hating as soon as she put it on for pictures. *sigh* At least only one child complained this year! Usually I have to bribe a large percentage of them to smile for pictures. Jack already had an outfit that would work, so we let him pick a dress shirt that didn't match to wear another time. He picked one with cuff links, a silk handkerchief, and a tie pin thingy. Fancy!

We made sure to wait until after Eva's nap this year, so she is actually smiling in the photos! :) I didn't love any of the group shots, but we got some fairly good ones, which isn't bad considering how many young kids are in them!

After the group shots, I let the kids do individual photos if they wanted to. Eva picked her own pose. Lovely, isn't it? :)

I think this one turned out really well though!

Jack carefully picked his props, deciding on his stocking in the background and guns fashioned out of broken transformer toys.

Megan wanted more serious shots. She looks so grown up!

Our attempt at a ballerina pose ~

Beth wanted to start with a nice photo ~

And finish with a goofy one ~

Kylie didn't want to take individual photos. She just wanted to get out of her dress.

Eva wanted another picture with the lollipops I used to reward the kids for doing pictures. You can never have too many lollipops you know!

We decided to get some photos of Laura too. Eva decided she needed to be in them. I love how close the two of them are! They are already such good friends!

We even managed to get a couple of Laura smiling ~