So this year we decided “what the heck, let’s try to do our own family photos.” Usually I cringe when Randy suggests it and insist that we hire someone to do it for us … But this year, he won the “let’s just do it ourselves” argument. Honestly, I didn’t have much hope. How many times have we all tried to get ourselves in a picture with our kids only to have it fail horribly? That was kind of our history … Until this year.

This year we knocked it out of the ball park. I have always joked around saying “man, I wish I had pictures of our family the way that I shoot” … Not to say I don’t enjoy other photographers’ work, because I absolutely do, but I really like the way I see the world and wanted to capture my family the way I see it. All it took was the promise of a special treat from Starbucks for the kids to participate. This shoot literally took 20 minutes for us to do! We set the camera on the tripod, set the timer for 20 seconds, and had it take 10 consecutive images every 2 seconds. Wam, bam, thank you ma’am.

Randy’s other bright idea? Ugly sweaters.

No really. I’m totally being serious.

We went to the Arc (a local thrift store here in town) and got Christmas themed ugly sweaters for everyone to wear … and we even picked up some super dorky Christmas goodies for our dogs to wear. None of the sweaters fit us – I was drowning in my green vest and Daniel looks like he’s wearing a sweater dress because we had to get his from the adult men’s section … Sierra’s little belly was about to spill out of her green Santa sweater. I mean really, it was just a hot, hilarious mess.

Anyway … We just had a lot of fun in a short amount of time, and afterward we celebrated our success (and warmed up) with Butterbeer’s from Starbucks’ secret menu (what – you didn’t know about it?!!).

Here are a few of my favorites from the rest of our session!

And just because it pretty much epitomizes our family … My favorite outtake!

Merry Christmas from the Durham family!

xoxo