Awhile back there was an amazing deal on Groupon for a photographer, and since the family picture we currently have displayed in our living room doesn't even include Noah or Allie, I happily bought it.

I should point out that, even though our picture is so out of date, that is not because we haven't had any others taken in the meantime. Last December we had a family picture taken by Olan Mills for our church directory. They turned out really, truly horrendous, but that didn't stop us from purchasing $156 worth of the photographs. (Steve can't say no to anyone who is trying to sell him something.) Allie's nose was running, Emma's hair looked dirty, Noah was grimacing in every photo, my hair was in my face, and Steve was doing some weird winking thing. Don't ask me how we all managed to look so terrible at one time, but rest assured that when those photographs arrived in the mail, I stuck them under a pile of stuff in my closet, never to see the light of day again.

Then, in April my whole family stood together in my parent's yard and I used a tripod and remote to get some shots of all of us. I also took a couple of my own family at the time, but none of those are anything that I'm willing to display on my wall, either.

So, when I saw the Groupon, I jumped at it. I was pretty excited, but the whole thing seemed a little jinxed from the start because we were doing an outside shoot and it was pouring rain. The photographer suggested we go under a bridge in the west bottoms, and under there we managed to stay at least 90% dry. Another strike against us was that Allie was a little sick, and consequently not feeling very cheery, but we hoped she could muster up a few smiles anyway.

In spite of the rain and the sick baby, things weren't going too terribly, until I noticed that we were standing by what is a local haunted house during Halloween season. I stupidly pointed out a werewolf figure in the window, which freaked Noah out enough that he refused to smile after that as well. I mean really, have you ever seen a more somber trio of children?
Zero smiles from those three, until I realized that Allie seemed to be chewing on something. Since there was nothing around us but a bunch of pigeon poop, I didn't know what could be in her mouth. I asked her to open up and show me. She promptly spit out a little glob of pigeon poop, much to the amusement of her siblings. Gag! At least that was the closest we got to having all the kids not look completely miserable.
And once again, there is not a single picture of the five of us that I think is worthy of actually being displayed in our house. We have tons of just the kids, but for now Steve and I will have to be content having only our wedding pictures on the walls.