Eye Candy

A while back I posted some photos from our family shoot with Nicole Coleman, but I held back a bunch, since I knew I was going to be using a few for a holiday card and I didn’t want to spoil it! But now the decision has been made, the cards have been printed, and about half have been addressed (my poor, cramped hand), so I figure it’s time to share more of the fun!

The story behind the shoot is I really wanted to do something fun, easy, and un-posed, since that’s when I feel like my family is at it’s best. We are not supermodels, and with a (then) 10 month old in tow, I knew we’d never get a perfect shot. This summer I had the idea to do something at a county fair, but when the day of the shoot came, it was (not joking) 111 degrees. So, yeah. That was cancelled.

At the time, we decided the best course of action was to wait until the weather got a bit cooler and reschedule the shoot. Then we both promptly forgot about it, due to our girls starting kindergarten, our lives going bananas, et cetera. We finally put a date on the calendar for October, and I told Nicole I’d find a fun place to do it.

I have no idea why I thought of Worlds of Fun. Those of you not from Kansas City have no idea what you are missing. Worlds of Fun is sort of like Six Flags, but smaller and dirtier. And smellier. But it’s a place I adored as a kid, I begged my parents to spend every birthday there, so I thought it might work.

[Ed. Note: To fully understand the grossness of Worlds of Fun, you’d have to see an after photo of my shoes at the end of the day. They went from yellow to black.]

I did not, however, account for the fact that come October, Worlds of Fun is basically the Kansas City headquarters for Halloween, complete with some of the scariest haunted houses in town. The entire park was filled with skeletons hanging from trees, scary music blaring through the speakers, and there was more than one coffin in attendance.

It is a testament to Nicole’s skill that you can’t tell any of this was going on in the photos. She captured exactly what I wanted. My family, being their awesome selves. I look at these pictures and I see the story of us.

And of course, Nicole was kind enough to attempt a posed photo as well. She is awesome.

P.S. Our Christmas card photo isn’t posted here, but it was also sort of posed and is awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Awesome. And once I get those suckers in the mail, I’ll post it here. Pinky swear.