Hello, my friends! I hope you are doing well! It’s all about our family holiday photos today.

About a month ago, we took our first professional family photos in a couple years, and it makes me so happy to have them to document where we are right now. It’s been a strange and challenging couple of years. But we are in such a better place than last year with most things. And I do plan to talk more about that soon in my year-in-review post on the blog.

But back to the photos: We took our photos at Marvin Efird Park in Marvin, which is a lovely little park only about 15 minutes from us. We had never been there before showing up for this photo session, and we were pleasantly surprised with what we saw. While Brady was disappointed there was no playground, there was a big lake you could walk around, some grassy knolls for picnicking and a big swing too.

Our photographer brought a little bench for us to sit on in a clearing with greenery, and we also took some standing and sitting shots in a hayfield. I’m pleased with our pictures. But I already decided that next year I want to make them a lot different than these. While I love that you can see us all clearly (which is what matters most), I feel like everyone has pictures outside in the grass like these, and maybe we can switch it up next year with something different. We scheduled these pretty quickly and our photographer was kind enough to fit us in, so we’re lucky we even got these done. I’ll plan more in advance next time (or at least I plan to plan more in advance, you know).

Anyhow, we booked a mini session to get these photos, which is only supposed to be about 15 minutes of shooting, rather than a full-hour process. This type of session is definitely better for families with small children, and I can attest to the fact that Brady was totally over the photo-taking situation about five minutes in. Our photographer, Erin Jackson of Madison Lane Photography, was great with us, and she actually spent more than the 15 minutes and did her best to keep Brady entertained. She was also super chatty and sweet and gave us excellent direction, and she was affordable. We loved her!

I wanted these pictures to live on the blog in one place, so that’s why I’m doing a whole post about them. Alright, let’s get to the photos …

Our 2021 holiday family photos

This is us, in October 2021, during our first year of living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

With our mini session, we were allowed to choose seven photos from the gallery, or we could buy the rights to the whole digital gallery. Clearly, I bought the whole gallery, because there was no way I could only choose seven.

There were a bunch of photos that I didn’t love (my hair was a big problem for me this day in many photos, and Rudy was growling at some nearby dogs in most of the pictures he was in, that’s why he doesn’t appear much), but we ended up with plenty of gems. Let’s see ’em …

And those are the ones worth sharing!

Here are our outfit details, in case you’re interested. I decided for us not to be too matchy-matchy with these photos, and it seemed to look okay:

• Dave’s shirt, Dave’s pants and Dave’s shoes
• My exact dress is sold out, but here is the same pattern, and here is the same fit
• Brady’s shirt, Brady’s pants and Brady’s shoes

And really, that’s it for the post for today, my friends. Keeping it short and sweet for you with our family holiday photos. Have a fabulous day and an even more fabulous week. I’m off to debut some new choreography in my Life Barre class, so wish me luck! 🙂 

Questions of the day

How was your weekend?

What’s one thing you’re looking forward to this week?

Are you sending holiday cards this year?