Family Pictures and a Tropical Storm

So, it was that time again. Time for the annual family picture. I wanted to do the ever-popular "pictures on the beach" at least once while we lived here. Little did I know the adventure that would turn out to be . . . First of all, you can never underestimate mother nature. I had scheduled our photo shoot weeks in advance, only to have Tropical Storm Lee hit the coast on that very day. So, we did the only thing we could do - take the kids to see "Winnie the Pooh" and rescheduled.

On our next attempt, the weather was beautiful - not too hot and sunny. But man it's hard to smile with that sun glaring in your eyes. And trying to get the girl's hair all nice was kind of a joke too, because of course it is always windy at the beach!

And finally, there's the kid factor. It is hard enough to get four kids to smile in pictures without having them completely distracted by seashells and wanting to run on the sand and get soaked in the water!! Kylie wanted to do nothing but run straight toward the water any second someone put her down. So we got a lot of pictures like the one above as well.

So yeah, one of our best shots is this one of us from behind, where Kylie is content because we are actually moving, the sun isn't in our eyes, and it doesn't matter that our hair is all blowing in our face.

However, despite all the obstacles, we did end up with some cute pictures, and *hooray!* family pictures are over for another year.