Family Photos-- The Struggle is Real

I love taking photographs.  I love to plan them, scout locations for them, edit them, you name it.  I also love having photos of my family.  Most of them are lacking a mother figure, but you get what you get when mama is a control freak.  

So here we are at the intersection of "I love taking pictures" and "I want to be in the pictures".  Insert helpful and talented family members fully capable of capturing family memories.  The scene is set--we are smack dab in the middle of a beautiful state park, everyone is wearing clean(ish) clothes and the light is just perfect.  An obscene amount of clicks takes place and I am sure there is a Christmas card photo somewhere on that sd card.  

Nope.  Just lots of awesome baby wrangling and awkward gazes, complete with pretend parent smiles.  And now, for your viewing pleasure:

 This last one is a gem.  If this is the face I make when I lift things I'm going to go ahead and avoid any public body building.

I can't decide which one will make it on the wall.  Maybe I'll do a collage.  

The back to school photos I didn't post on Facebook

I'm an extrovert and a sharer.  The kind of outgoing person who "makes friends" in any social situation, spends far too much time chatting, and sometimes wonders after a teacher's lounge discussion, "Did I talk too much?  Should I have really shared all that info?"  Then I get over it and move on.

Sharing on Facebook is something entirely different for me.  I enjoy scrolling through my friends' updates and photos, but I am always reluctant to share my personal tidbits.  I'm not super paranoid about privacy or safety, nor do I mind if others find me to be an over-sharer (see staff lounge note above).  For me, the sharing just seems "blah".  I can surely garner 100 or so likes and a few comments, but it just doesn't seem as fulfilling as when I scroll through them on my desktop and cheese out for unreasonable amounts of time.   So my extrovert ways stop there, with my kids' life events.  They are well documented and may someday meet their scrapbook destiny, but not on FB.  Until they turn seven and are tweeting and posting from their ipods.


Why take one photo when you can take a boatload?  We have all of twelve minutes to get to school.
I wanted to share these to offer up some Pinterest-y ways to document the first days.  The first photo is classic.  My family has been striking this pose since '86.

 This is the unoriginal but ever so  adorable chalkboard sign.  Quick and easy

 This one is full-on Pinterest.  Shirt via Amazon and letters ironed on. 

 Dual-sided chalkboard.  Because I get a first day of school every year too!