Getting THE Picture

I, like every parent, has spent countless hours trying to get the picture of their kids. When we had one child, piece of cake. Two children? Not that hard. But three? That has proved nearly impossible. So much so, that my friend Christy and I have an ongoing joke* about trying to get the picture.

*not so much a joke as we're both completely serious about it - much to the frustration of our children.

In our household we've come close quite a few times, but when inspecting the picture closer realize it just isn't it.

It never fails that one or more (or in the case all) of my children aren't looking at the camera....

Or that one or more of my children decides to give us that ridiculous fake smile.......

Let's not even talk about the phase we had where Lexi refused to even be in any of my pictures, so it seemed as if I only had two children.....


Or when Jack got mobile and every picture either had him crawling or walking away or he had something (cell phone, keys, camera case) in his lap to keep him still.....


Or most of our pictures which are any combination of the above.

But this Easter I swore I got the picture. So much so that I even posted to Christy's Facebook wall to tell her!


So, upon closer inspection I realize it's not the best picture of Samantha. And the background isn't nice at all. And it appears that my baby son is flipping me off. But, they are all looking at me without any obviously fake smiles. Sure Jack isn't smiling at all, but I've actually got a picture with Lexi's real smile.

Around here, we call that success. You know, until the next time I decide I'm going to torture them to get the picture.