From Our Family To Yours... in a Photocard

     It all starts with the Christmas cards.  Not the aisles transitioning from Thanksgiving to Christmas two days before Thanksgiving.  Not the commercials bombarding your children with what they can't live without.  Not the music on the radio.  Oh no, it's the Christmas cards for sure.  And nowadays it's not just any Christmas card, it's got to be the Christmas photo card.  Think of what your photo shelf or wall or decorative card tree looked like only 7 years ago and now look at it today.  My how things have changed.
     Today I have a hundred or so smiling faces looking at me.  No snowmen or Christmas trees, no Santa's sleighs or gingerbreads.  No matte or glitter, just shining glossy faces.  I resisted for years and years.  I would fill out my card and then slip a photo inside.  But the temptation to move to the photo-side just got to be too strong.  So I gave in.  I ordered my first photo cards last year.
     This year I went all-in.  I gave up my *favorite* seasonal past-time of addressing the cards and sticking on a free label that we got in envelope pleading for us to donate money to some worthy cause... maybe they shouldn't have included the free labels. To be fair, it'd be smarter for them to offer free labels only if we donated...  At any rate, this year I found a site that included shipping not just in the box to me, but to all of my recipients as well.  Holy wow.  I happily typed in the addresses and clicked submit. 
    I'm over-simplifying a bit here.  Actually a lot.  Every year Christmas cards become an unholy event in our household (and I'm assuming every one else's households as well).  Behind every smiling face is a shouting parent behind a camera and another parent sitting balled up on the sofa crying, "Whhhyy won't you just smile?"  For every photo that you see on a card (and sometimes there are three or more on the card), there were 50 more with their eyes closed, or blurry hands moving, or their butts facing towards the camera or their hats covering their eyes.  How many of these gems do we have on the photo roll?  Too many to count.



 

     And just when you have given up all hope, you take your last photo and...

     Painless, right?  See, I could just lie and say this was the only picture I took in front of the fireplace that day... but I wouldn't do that to you. And if I did, you would know I was lying anyway. 

     Of course, I have to resort to mostly tricks to get our Christmas cards done each year.  I try to occupy the children so I can snap a shot of them that looks like I planned it that way. Here are some of my tricks over the past few years.

Won't sit still?  Wrap him up as a present!

Too busy playing to notice that Mommy has laid down fake snow
and is taking a picture!



Read a book and then press delay on the camera! 
Start and stop reading about 10 times!

 

Notice we've changed the book so I can send photo cards to
my Jewish relatives.

May the force be with you this holiday season!



Imagine resorting to such trickery that you will actually give your children
sugary donuts before bedtime in order to snap a cheerful shot with them
staying in one place all so you that you can write,
"Hope your Christmas is filled with sweets and treats" on the card.

 

Our plan for this year's card almost backfired because the camera battery was
dead the night of the photo shoot so we needed to wait an extra night. 
Did you know that donut icing gets gooier if you try to save it for another day?

The price you pay for giving your child a sugary donut before bedtime.

 

 

     A friend of ours enlisted the help of professionals who resorted to putting their child in a gift box just before every photo and then snapping the shot as he finagled his way out, hoping to get a good moment.  Mind you, the gift box was not part of the photo, but the prop was used in hopes of delaying this child from running around the room and appearing as a blur in the photo.  Somehow she managed to have two pleasantly smiling children in the shot with the "runner coming out of the box".  I'm not sure how she managed that.

     Most of us have decided that parents should not be in the photo at all.  It's just too much work to get a good shot of the whole family.  Which is also why, in our annual photo book, there are usually only about 4 family shots... and none of them come from the holiday season.  The only exception to this rule is if you have older kids and they are in the photo wrapping you in Christmas lights... and the photo is being taken by a professional staging the whole event OR if you are pregnant.  If you are pregnant and you are not in the photo, your relatives will ask you to send pictures separately of you being pregnant... so you might as well put a photo on the photocard and get it over with!

     Some people want to jump onto the photo card bandwagon but don't have children.  These people often opt for glittery cards that get all over your sofa.  Or they choose to send a photo card of their pets.  I think I can admit that wrangling pets into outfits and getting a shot of more than one pet in a photo at a time would actually be more challenging than taking a picture of two kids.  In fact, I think it's downright impossible to get two awake pets in the same photo, let alone in costume.  This is probably why people resort to just putting the face of their puppy on a photo card image which turns her into a reindeer... or an elf.

     This year I have noticed that most of the photo card photos have nothing to do with the season.  Many of them are just pictures taken throughout the year.  What a liberating thought... that this doesn't have to be a scene I set up in front of the Christmas tree or during the first snow of the year.  In fact, the children might not have to be tortured at all next year.  Or better yet, I could just follow them around with a candy cane and take the holiday pictures just about anytime... or anywhere.  Or maybe my kids will get better at smiling on cue and not moving around after I set them up just right Who am I kidding?  I might as well just go buy the glitter cards that are on clearance this time of year.



 

     

What Friendships Have Become

     This summer my friend was absent on our annual camping trip. For 12 years we had been going on a weekend camping trip each summer, along with other good friends.  We see each other fairly often these days- as often as 30 somethings with kids who live in separate towns can possibly see each other- but somehow that's not quite enough. Something about that yearly camping trip, when we could sit down around a camp fire talking, rocking a baby or watching kids exploring the woods behind the site; something about that just makes a friendship richer.  So this summer when my friend said she was going to miss it, I just knew something needed to be done.  We camped without her and then we scheduled a second trip, later in the summer.  And it was great.  The kids were old enough to run between our sites and we all explored the waterfront for crayfish while holding our full Solo Cups.  Our husbands fished into the late night and didn't get a single bite.  We made S'Mores with marshmallows and Hersheys for the kids and that's when my friend whipped out the grown up chocolate.  Godiva Salted Caramel Chocolate bars.  Holy yum.  This is the meaning of true friendship.  She could've eaten the box chocolates on her own in her tent, but instead she shared and they made the best S'Mores... ever.
     Back in Elementary School, you played tag with your friends, pushed each other on the swings and competed at Super Mario Brothers.  In Middle School your best friends prank called you at 7:00 am so you would wake up to come over and watch cartoons and game shows all day.  You sat at the local Quickie-Mart and ate candy, perhaps, and rode your bike when you felt like moving off the couch or away from the laminate booth.
     High School?  Maybe you competed on the field, in the pool or on the court.  You passed notes folded into little triangles and written in secret backward-code language.  You called each other and talked for hours- which is saying a lot because most of us didn't get call waiting until halfway through the 90s, and some people never did quite catch on despite the fact of having teens in the house.  When you weren't on the phone, you were looming at each other's houses trying to get a freebie for dinner if you liked the way their mom and dad cooked (my favorite house to go to had a light salad and fresh bread for dinner each night).  You spent the night, without actually sleeping, finding ways to stay up later and later and into the morning (like dipping strawberries into instant coffee grounds and pouring water on sleeping siblings).  And if you were me (and Jewish), you even found excuses to stay over on Christmas Eve to actually experience a Christmas morning (at which point, you were hooked for life on the joy of the holiday).  High School was a great time for friendships. True, there was homework, but there was also long walks home and older boyfriends with cars.  There was more to talk about; more angst, more heartbreak.  And so, we talked, and laughed, and competed.  We shared.
     College started off with circles of friends, trying each other out.  We shared stories about our friends back home- the kinds of stories that didn't reveal too much about ourselves because we were still unsure of who we were.  We laughed and connected, trying to figure each other out while also trying to figure out our homework (okay, I was friends with a bunch of nerds, whatever).  We experimented together, walked together, and sat on the quad on sunny days together putting off work.  We did everything together and found out that our friends liked dessert instead of dinner and watching X-Files instead of doing homework.  Here's the thing- in college, particularly at that in-between time when we were too old to go to house parties but too young to have ID- we spent hours and hours in our dorms & apartments... talking.  We would cozy up in plaid pajama pants just talking for hours, about nothing in particular.  And that was what a friend was, someone to turn to, someone to talk to, someone to have fun with.
     Friendships have changed so much over the years.  Having young children means that long talks in pajama bottoms are completely out of the question.  Not only are you too busy, but after they go to sleep, you are too tired.  And what friend with kids stays past bedtime anyway?  Friendship has changed a lot over the years and I'm constantly noticing its evolution.  But it's not in a bad way by any means, that's what is so surprising. True, there's less time to talk, but there's also less that needs to be said.  It's that true appreciation of one's friends that comes with the wisdom of age.  It's knowing who to turn to if you need directions on how to make cake pops, or cream cheese Snickers dip.  Friendship is picking up where you left off.  Friendship is saying goodbye to good friends with a smile, hoping they will come back soon.  Friendship is dishing out Insider Disney tips (like: Stay for the fireworks, eat cinnamon rolls at the bakery on Main Street, DON'T go to the Progress of Time unless you need a break from walking anyway, Do have your bald husband get a sparkling Mickey glued onto the back of his head, arrange for cute matching shirts, etc...).  These are currently my definitions of good friendships. You know you've truly arrived a the mecca of good friends when you invite a large group over and you notice that you are not stressed about your living conditions.  Yes, you need to vacuum and wash dishes before they show up but it isn't a big deal when you look up and realize their are dead bugs in your ceiling fan that you didn't have a chance to clean out.  And you don't feel ashamed of the fake brick on your kitchen walls (that you can't for the life of you figure out how to cheaply remove... or cover up).  No, good friends don't care about any of that and will not judge about any of that.  But I digress.  Good friends come over and share great food and efficiently listen while at the same time cutting up their child's hot dog into small bites.  Good friends nod sympathetically at just the right times.  They clean out Crock Pots after your chili cook-off and help you put away all of the left overs before they spoil.
     This weekend we had a celebration we like to call "Friendsgiving". We've been known to have any one of several types of fall parties: Halloween, Octoberfest, Deep Fry Fest and Friendsgiving.  This year we were due for an extra turkey dinner so we called up a few friends and before we knew it our house was jam-packed, the kids were a riot tearing apart the downstairs, babies were being passed around and all the cups were filled to the brim.  We didn't have too much time to talk about deep philosophical musings like we had back in college. Instead it was just deep appreciation for each other. One friend came from having a family picture taken... and it didn't take much to see that she and her husband needed a drink the second they walked into the door.  Before long we were all sharing stories of how the kids wouldn't stop crying, of how we were sure none of the pictures would turn out, of how they had broken into that strange rash the morning of the appointment, of how we realized at the last minute that none of our pants matched in the photo or how we had to trick our kids into sitting still and smiling by giving them a book to pretend to read.  True friendship is showing your friend the family photos you have, and pointing out how everyone's eyes are directed someplace different, the look of panic on your husband's face and also how tightly you are gripping your youngest so that he will not run away again.  And at the end of the night after we had eaten, talked, laughed and talked some more, we finished it all off with dessert and coffee.  I looked in the fridge. There was hazelnut creamer and hidden purposefully in the back there was a new flavor of creamer Bill had just bought for me. International Delight Salted Caramel.  Limited Edition.  These were my friends, in my home.  They deserved the best.  So I shared, because that's what good friends do.