Family Christmas Photos

Every year I make it a point to have family photos made. Not only do I cherish these annual photos (because it’s so rare to have all four of us in a photo together, much less a decent one!), but I like to time them for the Fall so that I have a good photo for our family Christmas card come December. Win, win!

The very same day we had our family photos made last year was the day we found out we would be adding another sweet baby to our family.

It’s still a miracle to see our family of four and to think that a year ago Fletcher was just the size of a tiny poppy seed growing in my belly.

Megan from Megan Wallach Photography took these beautiful photos. You may remember she also did our gorgeous maternity photos this past Spring.

Megan is as sweet as they come and I don’t even have to tell you how talented she is. She makes these photo sessions quick, easy and fun (must-haves for my boys!) and she is able to capture our family so well.

Earlier this year Feltman Brothers sent us the most gorgeous Christmas outfits from their 2018 Holiday line. I immediately knew I wanted the boys to wear them for our family photos this year.

Their Christmas outfits are so classic and elegant, which is exactly the way I envisioned our Christmas photos.

I wore a red maxi wrap dress that has become my go-to dress for pictures. It is the same dress I wore in our family photos last year except in red.

The dress is perfect for photos. Not only it is Prime eligible, it is classic, elegant, flattering and extremely affordable. What else could you want in a dress?!

Hubby of course opted for his signature look and wore a bow tie. I chose this classic tartan plaid bow tie that is just perfect for Christmas.

These photos were taken at Barrington Hall in historic downtown Roswell, Georgia.

It was actually a last minute location change (rescheduled due to weather and the boys being sick), which was more than okay with me. Gorgeous historic southern home with the most dreamy porch and big white columns? Yes, please! I felt like Scarlett O’Hara standing in front of Tara : )

But the the last minute location change left us scrambling to get ready in time. Roswell is a longer drive than the original location that was just ten minutes down the road from our house.

Getting your family ready for photos can be hard enough if you have all the time in the world. But when you go from thinking you have 40 minutes until you need to leave, to needing to leave right now, it’s a whole new level of chaotic.

I know we will laugh about it for years to come, but we were a sight to be seen when we showed up for these pictures.

We had to leave in such a hurry that we took everything we needed, threw it into the car and left as quickly as we could. I was half dressed, trying to apply makeup on the ride there.

We showed up to Barrington Hall and proceeded to change diapers and dress our naked babies in the parking lot in the back of my car. Not totally out of the norm for us as I do a lot of nursing and diaper changes in the car these days.

I went to brush John Davis’s hair and quickly realized the huge mistake I had made in the chaos right before we left the house.

As I was running around like a mad woman trying to get everything ready, Hubby asked me if I wanted him to brush John Davis’s hair. Of course I did.

He also asked if I wanted him to put “a little” bit of product in his hair. I said yes. But only a little. Huge emphasis on little.

What was I thinking? We all know that men and women have very different ideas of what “a little” means.

I can barely even type this without laughing out loud. Hubby used so much product that John Davis’s beautiful, blonde, soft baby hair was completely slicked back and looked like one big grease ball. I tried to get it out to no avail. By that point we had no choice but to embrace it.

I’m glad I can laugh about it now because I wanted to kill him at the time. I’m also glad it’s not entirely too noticeable in our photos. Although I’m sure if you look hard enough you can see it 🙂

Both boys had just been coming off a week of sickness and Fletcher was covered head to toe in a horrible red rash. It was so bad I almost just cancelled our photos altogether.

Want to know what he looked like? Just google “measles” and you will see exactly what he looked like. No exaggeration.

Thank goodness Megan is super talented and has some great editing skills. You would otherwise never know if I didn’t tell you.

Hmm.. what else went wrong?

Oh, see Hubby’s lovely shoes? (insert eye-roll emoji here) Another thing I failed to notice as we scrambled to get out the door was that Hubby had slipped on a pair of his well-loved (read: old and worn) casual loafers. Not exactly what I had in mind for our elegant Christmas photos 😉

This was the first really cold snap of weather we had here in Georgia. I’m sure if you look really closely you can see us shivering.

And if you look really closely I’m sure you can also see the bag of gummy bears in Hubby’s back pocket that we used as bribery.

Poor Megan, she really had her work cut out for her with our family. Not only did she have all of our craziness to work with, but she is a mom of three girls and I’m not sure she really knows what to think of John Davis running 100 mph the entire photo session : )