Easter Photo Shoot

I’m really not a big fan of Easter on General Conference weekends. I feel that everything is such a compromise. You can’t do all the Easter things you want to do, and you also miss out on many of the General Conference traditions. I may be sour because this Easter was a particular disaster. Nothing went according to my plans, and I never take it well when that happens. It also included being locked out of our house (with one barefoot child and a slew of grocery shopping to get done before Sunday) while Aaron was at priesthood session—thank goodness for friends that live close. But we survived, and if I thought it was a mess, I don’t think the kids noticed that anything was amiss. I forgot that there was no church on Easter Sunday, so I bought Easter dresses, and I didn’t have the heart to take them back because everyone looked so adorable. Averi was being a particular pill this weekend (it didn’t help that she was sleep-deprived and cutting four teeth), so pictures were a nightmare. I had to bribe her with chocolate, which we fortunately had in abundance. The results, however, weren’t fantastic. We also had to just plop down where ever Averi chose to sit. Which meant we have the sand-and-water table, dirt, and stucco as a lovely backdrop. Eventually Aaron decided to drop grass on my head while I was taking pictures. Distracting for me, but we soon got a smirk from Averi. It changed to a half-smile when Aaron started to put the grass in my ear. There’s a reason so many photos turned out slightly blurry. That was the best we got. Not too shabby. I can photoshop lovely fields into the background if I want. Then I got this photo: And I thought, “Hey, that’s kinda cute! Katie and Paul, why don’t you both kiss Averi on the cheek?” And this is what happened: And so we were done with the group photos. I got a lot of this: And some of this: (Poor Paul! Doesn’t he look frightened of the screaming banshee behind him?) Being bribed with more chocolate: Fortunately, Katie and Paul were much more agreeable about taking photos, despite the prima donna in the studio. Paul has this weird thing about being unable to look at the camera (he can’t look you in the eye when you’re scolding him, either). But I’ll take that any day over Miss Attitude. This is such a Paul face; I love it! This is what I did to keep my hands busy during the Sunday morning session of Conference: Isn’t my Katie just beautiful! I love that she’ll actually sit still to take photos for me. She LOVES being the center of attention!