Happy 2011!

Yes, it is February and yes I am still saying welcome to 2011 :) I thought I would post our family picture of the year that we sent out with our yearly letter. For those of you who did not receive one please do not be offended! We had to shorten our list this year as tight as possible due to lack of funding (we are dearly missing our Japan paycheck). So, for those of you who didn't get one, this is for you!

It was an exciting time taking these photos. It was right at dusk and we were rushing to get the shot before all the light was gone. It'd be easy if there were no animals involved cause me and Brain know how to sit still for a slow shutter, but we were lucky to get the dogs to sit still for anything at all. Let me just say that I truly hate self timer. I don't have the patience for it, and I also hate tripods (due to a lack of patience I am sure). Someday maybe we will have someone do the pictures for us. This was shot at ISO 800 (hence the graininess) and it was super dark (cause we couldn't do a slow shutter with the pups) so I brought it up in photoshop. Oh the madness. Brian suggested we just do it tomorrow. The problem with tomorrow is it never comes! What if there is no tomorrow!?! There wasn't one today! - absolute favorite line from Groundhog Day. If you haven't seen the movie... shame on you.



Below was a close second, but Brian's face was impossible though. Smile! I thought about photo-shopping it, but didn't feel like spending any time on it, cause we all know how I truly despise spending too much time fixing any one image (even if it is working on my dear beloved's face...)



Why did Shugo roll over? It literally happened seconds before the shot was taken... I wanted to kill him. He is supposed to be the easy one.



Got tired of the dogs for a shot, but decided we could not send out a shot without them (and I truly think that that thought goes through every person's mind as I am shooting their family photos. Some parents even say that to their children).



And one without Chancho, because he too was being impossible. And Brian, "smiling with his eyes" as he calls it. He has a hard time smiling on cue 99% of the time, and this is his default.