Our 7 Year Anniversary Family Photo Shoot at Home

Shawn and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary in May. Quite honestly, it's been a long time coming to be able to use the word "celebrate" when talking about our marriage. Before you look at these photos, if you're new to the blog- do us both a favor and take 15 minutes to read this post about our road to getting married and why it hasn't been an easy road traveled. I don't want anyone stumbling upon this photo shoot thinking we have the perfect marriage. Anyone can smile for a camera. "Perfect" is far from the message I ever want to put out there. We've worked crazy hard to get to this point... and because of that we decided to celebrate with a family photo shoot with the amazing Christina of Moments Captured Photography, located in our home town of Orcutt, Ca.

Now let me tell you one important thing about having a family photo shoot: don't do it the day before your anniversary.

Let me tell you why...

For most moms The Family Photo Shoot can be a bit of a stressful task to put together... anyone out there feel me?! I knew one thing and one thing only- we had the perfect photographer... other than that I was clueless and hadn't even Pinterested ONE family photo shoot for inspiration. I mean, really Kenna... Christina decided we'd be a great fit for "Lifestyle Photography" and I said, "Sounds fancy... sign us up!"

I dug up our Scrabble board for a photo prop because while I was doing a short stint on bed rest with my daughter Birdie, we played Scrabble- like, a lot. I may or may not have even tipped over a Scrabble board a time (or two)... I mean, no one likes to lose- especially when you're sitting on your butt all day, trust me. Winning games is all you've got. For the photo shoot we played with the tiles to create words and names breaking all of the traditional Scrabble rules...

Being as though this was our first family photo shoot by a real photographer (where we weren't at one of my parties and had a couple family pictures taken) I stumbled upon a few stressors I didn't previously know about...

+ Making sure we all matched- yet didn't match. I picked out the outfits we're wearing and then changed them 50 times, only to come back to the outfits we're wearing...

+ Making sure my kids remained clean before Christina arrived... I was so on edge and wondering why I didn't just slip their clothes on as she arrived.... DUH. Rookie mistake.

+ Keeping my house clean because we were being photographed in it... I have kids so obviously this was tricky and brought out the crazy, "Don't touch that!" cleaner in me... whom Shawn just loves... (insert sarcasm)

+  My husband not taking the photo shoot as seriously as me... or any kind of serious...

+ My kids acting like kids and not caring a bit (even less than their Dad) about said photo shoot... but instead, only caring about jumping off of our ottoman...

All I have to say is thank God Christina knows what she's doing. She's got attention-getting toys and noises and all sorts of tricks up her sleeve to get 2 kids'... (make that 3 kids') attention. Time after time she produced pictures with both kids looking and smiling: nothing short of a photography miracle if you ask me! I'm pretty sure my daughter was totally convinced she was her new Momma too... they had a pretty adorable connection.

By the end of the shoot I was exhausted and annoyed with Shawn for his carefree attitude and trying to make-out with me in all of our "sweet kiss" shots... AND for letting the kids scribble all over my "Happy 7 year Anniversary" chalk board... and then I realized, "Oh ya... it's 'life style' photography... as in the photos are supposed to be about *our* life, where my husband is care free and my kids like to scribble... hmmmm... good point." Gosh I hate when he's right.
                                                                   
                                                                      xo Party or Die xo
                                                                                kenna