picture day

We all went on our annual fall picture excursion on Friday. Of course this year we HAD to have our family documented at our favourite location.
Back to the Cricket Place it was, this time with everyone(including our personal photographer, Gramma).
Most of the pictures I'm not in, I was the one with the camera, habit I guess. Other wise there's mom, but if we're BOTH in the shot, you can bet it was Gramma.
Mom and I headed up with the kids before Gramma came with Dad. We were able to sneak a few good shots in before they got to the Nature Area.

My Princess is always the most eager to smile for the camera, and she is also the easiest of the 3 little one to get sitting still.



My superhero loves his little brother!




I had to get at least one 'artistic random shot' before our photo session got into full swing.



Mom and her baby.

Mom with the mini crew.

Can you guess who's the character of the family?



I had to hand the camera over to Mom. It's impressive that we are all looking at the camera, and everyone looks happy!
Let me tell you, that can be a LOT harder to achieve than you think.



Someone's spotted something...

After that last picture a certain someone went on one of his intense bug hunting episodes, and guess what! Barely a minute had passed and he had a buggy green trophy clutched between his fingers.

Sisters!
I love this picture.



Somehow the Princess got a hold of my Superhero's prize, and I'm sure would be willing to take all the credit for this find. I'm sorry, but this green little treasure is all his!

I don't know how he does it, but my superhero's little eyes are trained to spot anything that moves. He found this Praying Mantis basically right under my knee during the picture taking. This is the fourth trip in a row that he's found a Praying Mantis.

We are all very easily distracted.

Me killing some time between pictures.
Ignore my shadow, it seemed to have gotten in the way.

Gramma and Daddy got to the Nature Area at this point.
It's tradition that every year Gramma takes our family pictures. Sometimes she has a hard time seeing us in the little digital screen, but most of the time the pictures don't turn out too bad.
She is 84, but she's still more than willing to trek around the woods snapping pictures of us, while we call directions at her.

Daddy with the little guys. I'm not sure when, but the camera got into my mom's hands, because I definitely do not recall taking this shot, or the next.

The Kids with Gramma.

All of us together.

With six people in the shot it can be hard to have everyone looking decent and facing the camera. We take what we can get.

Me with my Gramma.

Finally I got the camera back... can you tell.

Mom and Baby.
I'm not sure what that is across the right side of the picture... it might be grass, but I don't know for certain.

We can't keep the Superhero from searching for his creatures.
We do try to get him to sit with us, but he has far more important things to do.

The Princess likes to come up with poses for us to do.
In her words: "Let's sit on this log and hold flowers like this".

Happy Baby!

The last official shot of the day... the kids seem a little worn out.

Of all our visits to the nature area we've never seen a snake slithering through the woods.
The first time we discovered this place was an event where they had some people there talking about snakes. They also had a few snakes there to hold, but other than that, it seemed pretty snake free.
Not for picture day! We saw at least three different snakes on that one visit. I was able to get 2 good shots, but these skinny little guys were way to fast(and camera shy) for anything more.


Can you see the tiny little head right in the middle of the picture?

 Some time during my little snake distraction everyone got changed. This was Mom's wild idea.
Let me explain.
Superheros have become a big part of all of our lives. We have a wonderfully obsessed 4-year-old on our hands and we finally decided, why not just go with it.
I guess we must have looked pretty impressive with all of us in our get ups, because someone there, with a pretty snazzy looking camera, asked to take our picture.

Super Baby!

Out little superhero on the go.

How did he get so cute?

Yes, we are all in matching outfits... don't judge.

Super Girl!
Aren't her boots the sweetest?

If you can't beat em', join em'.

Poor Baby got a little squished.

And he wasn't putting up with it.

Finally, after all our family shots I got my camera back and was able click away at my leisure. Picture day this year was much more relaxed than usual, but with so many little kids to corral, it has to be, otherwise it's ends up being no fun at all.

A lovely vibrant leaf floating across the water.

I just can't leave 'The Cricket Place' without getting at least one good cricket shot.

And of course I needed a few other buggy shots to satisfy me before I left.

The face of this wasp(or yellow jacket... I'm not really sure what it is) is really exotic.

The imperfections of this leaf are really intriguing.

My Superhero surveying his kingdom.

I guess Superman got a little hot and decided to strip down a bit.

One of our faithful friends showed up, which is always fun. Micah was the one who introduced River to his world of frogs and bugs, and from the looks of it, he's hooked too.
We also met a knew homeschooled family that day. We saw them walking through the trails with little nature sketch books tucked under there arms, and we knew for sure that they must be one of us.

So that was our family picture day 2010. Fun, lovely weather, enjoyable, and at our favourite spot. What more could we ask for?

Fall is most definitely here!