Holiday Photo Time

Once again, it's that time of year when I try to take photos for our holiday cards.  Kevin had the great idea to head to the botanic gardens to take the pictures.  Much prettier than at home, and we were all ready to get out of the house for a bit.  The fresh air, walking, and climbing steps did us all some good.  We got there fairly early and the place was empty, so the kids got to run around some of the gardens and burn off some pent up energy.  As always, many of the pictures were completely unusable, but funny, so here we go!  I'm not sharing the good ones, so the cards will be a pleasant surprise, but you will know how hard we all had to work to make the magic happen.

 Unfortunate expressions seem to happen a lot with these two.  Malcolm actually does pretty well, but then gets bad expressions when trying to help keep Dorothy in line.

 Here's a perfect example of him looking goofy in an effort to get her to do what we want her to do.  She wasn't standing close to him or looking at me, so he grabbed her to pull her in, but then this expression happened.  She looks great.

 However, sometimes, he just gets plain silly.  It was around this time that we started to lose them a bit.

 There was a big tree with lights and several large pots of poinsettias which would have made a great backdrop, but she was having none of it. Every shot from there was terrible.  Perfecting her pout.

 Going for an evil look.

 The focus is all wrong, and I don't like her finger in her mouth, but Kevin and I both thought that Malcolm looked a lot older here.  You can almost see what he will look like as a young adult.

 I asked Malcolm to sit down in a certain spot (which he did) and then asked Dorothy to sit facing the other way so that their backs would be touching. She knelt behind him instead and I accidentally caught Kevin reaching in to turn her around. You can see what she thinks of my picture taking from her look.

 Finally, she just went limp. Here, Malcolm is trying his best to hold her up and get his face up over hers so he can still be seen. Nice try, kiddo.

 Right after this, we went into one of the greenhouses, and she sat down on a stump and told me to take her picture.

 She still didn't want to look at me, but what the heck, kid? Why can't you do this when I ask?  Both of these poses were done without any prompting from me.  She did it all on her own.  Stinker.

 As far as I can tell, they are both being flamingos here.

 There were some round, window like holes that we had them peek through.  This would have been so cute if her hair wasn't in her face.

 Malcolm had a hard time not making crazy faces at this location.

 In the conifer garden, they got pretty suspicious of me and they have the same smirk.

 Dorothy goes limp again.

 They were pretty much done by now, and their cheeks and noses were starting to get a bit rosy.

Each kid got to take one picture with the camera before we left and this was Dorothy's.  Malcolm's was blurry, but her's isn't too bad for a three year old.