I’m slightly addicted to professional photographs of my kids.  It’s becoming an expensive problem since I find myself looking for any excuse to have their pictures taken by a photographer.  Father’s Day Mini Photo Shoot?  Sign me up!  Parent’s 40th wedding anniversary?  Family photo shoot!

The thing about it, is the kids are always miserable.  And I feel bad…but clearly not bad enough to learn my lesson.

Yesterday, we celebrated my parent’s 40th anniversary.  My brothers and I arranged for a photographer to come to shoot the grand kids on the beach.  Everyone wore blues and white.  It was going to be kids romping and playing and being carefree.  Perfect.

But, as you can imagine, it was terrible.  It was too hot.  The sun was too bright.  And my kiddies couldn’t stick it out another half hour for the lighting to get softer.  There was throwing of sand.  Eating of sand.  And A LOT of crying.  From the corner of my eye, I could see Jake pacing back and forth—thinking that this was the worst idea ever…but too expensive to not try to make work.

So we stuck it out for a little longer.  I haven’t seen the photos yet.  My fingers are crossed for one good one.

Maybe the next photo shoot will be better…

Some pics from one photo shoot.  And  a fun tip on taking photographs.

Since personal time needs to be scheduled now (do we have a sitter? etc…) getting a family calender was in order.  We bought this huge over-sized calendar that hangs in our kitchen.  If it’s not on the calendar–it’s not happening!

My mother in law and I were going through the calendar to mark down important dates like holidays and upcoming family trips and before we knew it, we were looking at December.  How can that be!  So it got me thinking about the kids’ first birthday party.

I have mixed feelings about a first birthday party celebration.  On the one hand, I love a reason to throw a party.  And celebrating the first year with twins is certainly a good reason!  We’ve come a long way!  But on the other hand,  it seems like a party has the potential to stress out the kids.

I have a few friends who have thrown kid-centered first birthday bashes (with sing-a-long music, etc…), another friend hosted an elegant country club birthday lunch and one friend, recently, who had a small family breakfast followed by a trip to the birthday girl’s favorite petting zoo-with immediate family only.

But party styles aside,  it seems that my friends agree it’s best to:

1. keep the party short

2. delegate someone (besides Mom and Dad) to take pictures

3. scale back the guest list (after all, it’s not a wedding)

I suppose we have some time to decide what we will do…But at least I know it’s on the calendar!

Do you have advice about throwing a first birthday party?  Do’s or Don’ts?  I’d love to hear!

Photo Credit: From Me To You

Jake’s cousin Caren is an unbelievable photographer.  I highly recommend noodling around her website.  Her work is stunning.  She was visiting from San Francisco and we were lucky enough to have her shoot some pictures of the kids.  These are some of my favorites.  Enjoy!

When I started collecting vintage globes I thought they would be fun in a nursery.  But with two cribs, a glider, extra storage…there was just no room, in our little room, for such a collection.

Now that the kids are at the age where they are minutes away from crawling, it’s time to work on our playroom.  Our finished basement is currently being used as our guest room.  And when friends come to visit it would be nice to still have a place for them to stay–without making them feel like they are sleeping at Toys R Us.

I’m using this picture as inspiration.  I think my globe collection (and our friends) will be very happy here!