Approximately One Million Pictures of My Kids
I'm mostly doing this for myself, so feel free to skip it.
Years ago - can I figure out how many? Yes. It was in 2014, so eight years ago - we were decorating the tree, and I made the kids put on Christmas-ish pajamas and started to take a few pictures of them. My husband, who is the king of the groan-inducing dad joke but occasionally has flashes of brilliance, grabbed the tea cups we had recently gotten from his grandmother and made the kids start posing.
And thus was born the Annual Adams Christmas Tree Photo Shoot With Props.
(It occurs to me that I make fun of others in our friend group for immediately trying to cement every fun thing we do into a carved-in-stone must-happen-yearly tradition: end of summer at Walsh's cottage. Halloween party at Wardles. Christmas party at Antayas. New Year's party here (this tradition is kind of wobbly). Sandbanks every August. Someone tried to get an Oktoberfest one going, but it petered out after two years thank goodness (one tradition in October is enough, I am an easily overwhelmed introvert), and I might be ignoring the fact that I am a big part of the problem.)
One year it was a voluminous Shakespeare compendium. One year it was tools (in honour of the house falling apart). Covid year it was masks, obviously. I just keep shooting and we take turns looking goofy and it's fun and funny and I don't THINK it's turned into a forced-march chore yet - the kids still participate willingly, and Angus even made me do it this year when I thought we'd wait a couple more days.
This year it was a candle and matches, a flashlight and an emergency radio in honour of the Christmas-buggering Storm of the Century.
Lucy participates in various assorted ways and attitudes
Matt provides offstage directions
Things get blurry
Someone makes a bad joke
Lucy changes her mind
Whatever this is
Oops
Money shot
Now the candle
Oops
Other oops
The immortal star-growing-out-of-his-head shot
Okay fine, enough
And the rest of us
I often like the out-takes even more than the good shots, and include them in the subsequent year's Christmas cards, fully aware that I'm being a giant dork of the "oh look how precious, somebody's eyes are closed and Lucy is an escaping blur, we are a wild card madcap bunch" variety. I'm mostly comfortable with that.
Apologies to anyone who is reading all this while the photos are still loading. I won't do this again until next year.
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