Family Friday | Christmas Formals

It’s tradition! Each November I do the casual Christmas card portrait. Each December I do the formal portrait. Each January I do the Christmas PJs portrait.

I’m really having to think to make each year different from previous years. I don’t even know why it’s so important to change it up. The first year that I attempted Christmas portraits, I did the formal portrait on a white backdrop. Bug had just turned one and something wasn’t right… I realized after the fact that I’m just not a white backdrop kind of person for most things (except cake smashes. I do love a plain background for a cake smash). So the second year of the formal portrait attempt, I had Bug sit on the hearth of our fireplace. Last year was two kids in front of the Christmas Tree. This year I opted for something simple and used a wrapped gift as a chair and sat them in front of the window. I was toying with the idea of running with the Christmas Lights fad and stringing white lights behind the curtain, but in the end laziness– I mean, simplicity and preferring timeless looks to fads… yeah, that’s it– won out and we used the window as-is.

As is typical of an almost 2 year old, Moose was not interested in sitting on a box for his Mama. He is more interested in standing with me and looking at the pictures on the back of the camera. He actually wants to look at HIS pictures, but he won’t give me more than a millisecond to capture the image before he’s standing next to me in a flash demanding “SEE! SEE!” Bug, on the other hand, has finally passed that stage and now enjoys posing and hamming it up for me.

This was the quickest session I think we have ever attempted. I took a total of 10 frames before both kids were gone. Four of them had either blinks or weird expressions as I caught them talking. And this is what was left.

It makes me laugh, and I’m going to be glad to have these as the years fly by. I feel like they are already growing up in the blink of an eye. How is my moose man almost two already? I feel like he was my baby burrito just yesterday.

© lux amoris 2011