Family Pictures

We went to Oregon, and it will take me days to sort through the pictures and put posts together for that.  But I wanted to post these now.  Thinking of family pictures this year I wanted to do something different.  My first thoughts were going up to the mountains and doing them on a trail somewhere, or in a meadow with the mountains in the background.  I see pictures like this all the time, mostly from my Utah friends.  But I figured it wouldn't be too hard to get forest or mountains.  We could go to Island Park or Palisades.  But I wasn't sure exactly where and didn't want to waste too much time wandering around aimlessly.  I had started gathering clothes for this style of photo.  Then the idea came to me to try beach photos in Oregon.  I had never been to Oregon but always heard how beautiful it is.  A friend told me it's very hazy that adds a cool effect.  So I changed tactics and got clothes for beach photos instead.  Whites and light blues or purples were beachy.  Bold blues and pinks were better for forests.

We got a picture, and we will use it for our Christmas card this year.  But there were a few problems.  First, it was full sun.  No clouds to mute it at all.  No haze.  Second, it was humid!  Which killed all the girls hair.  That's basically the problems, but the other one is that Kaden got a sunburn.  It was barely 60 degrees and we were running around outside.  I didn't even think about sunscreen.  He didn't care, but he was definitely red.

The thing that killed me was there was this awesome, beautiful trail in the forest right by the resort where we stayed.  We walked through it many times.  And it was perfect for pictures.  But I didn't have the bold colors I had envisioned for forest.  I was pretty bummed, especially when the sun was so harsh on the beach.  Oh well!  (That picture is further down).

 This jumping picture was fun and took us many, many tries. 

I'm posting the rest to show what I got, but I wasn't happy with them at all.

I edited Kaden's teeth in this pic.  Oddly enough, the dark spots have lightened quite a bit and it doesn't look as bad now as it did.

 Seriously, that sunburn...  I felt horrible.  He said it didn't hurt, and it had gone away within a day or two.

After we got home, I knew I needed to get some better individual shots of my kids.  And I had to do it fast because Kylee was going to get braces.  We had put off her appointment until after Oregon just so we could do family pictures before she got braces for two years.  So we waited for an open evening with good weather and we headed over to the sand dunes.  And I LOVE the way they turned out!  It was still full sun, so we had to go down to a spot with some shade.  I can't catch a break with some light cloud cover!

 You'd be surprised how hard it was to get them to pretend like they like each other.  And to get them jumping at the same time.  It turned out hilarious though so it's all good.

This one wasn't as good of everyone else, especially since I cute Kylee's hands off (darn tall child) but look how much air Kaden got! LOL