I had it all planned out. I had the CUTEST picture idea for Father’s Day. I was going to line them all up. Write on their feet the following words: “We Love You Dad” and snap a picture of their feet, with all 6 kids somewhat blurry in the background, so you can still see who the feet belong to. The actual feet would be in focus. Great idea, right?
So, this is how it really went……
We’re hurrying to get this done as I had to leave for a trip out of town in an hour. This was our only opportunity to get the photo with all 6 kids together, as they wouldn’t all be together again until Saturday evening.
I made sure all of their feet were clean, except the toddler….oops. Oh well daddy won’t’ mind a bit of dirt on his feet in the picture! After all he is all boy…and gets dirty ALL. THE. TIME. Then, I sat them all down in the grass to take the picture.
The 4 year old starts freaking out. “I’m too itchy!”, she cries (or whines or wails). Me, being desperate to have this thing go off without a hitch, quickly run into the house to get her a towel to sit on. When I get back, I grab the toddler, trying to get him to sit down.
He freaks out! HE does not want to cooperate. He keeps getting up. He cries if I try to get him to sit down.
OK, maybe we can make him sit there for a quick second, even if we have to make him cry. I get their feet all lined up and I start writing the words on the bottoms of them.
It tickles! Do you know how hard it is to write a letter on a squirmy tickly foot? Yeah….the letters were far from perfect. “I wonder if he’ll know that this letter is really a “D”?”, I thought to myself!
OK, finally, I got all of those letters on their feet. Now its time for everyone to sit still and get the picture.
“WAHHHH”, says the one year old. He does not want to sit still. No way. OK, 13 year old forces him to sit there. Screaming and all.
Hurry, take the picture, I’m thinking as I scurry to find just the perfect distance away.
Got it. “Oh no, it’s not on the right setting, it didn’t blur out the background. Let me see if I can figure that out.” Maybe we need to move to a different spot.
And then, my 15 year old yells…………..
Daddy’s Home!
He came home for lunch! He rarely comes home for lunch, but he knew I’d be leaving and wanted to see me before I left! Normally, that’s a joyous occasion, but we can’t let him know what we were doing. So we all hop up like we were just standing in the yard with a camera, doing nothing, right before we leave for a trip and then we all mosey back into the house.
I got one whole picture and that picture wasn’t going to work.
Here’s that lone picture. You’ll notice I even managed to cut off the first letter of the sentence. 🙂
So that is the story of my failed, large family Father’s Day photo gift. Large families are notorious for needing a LONG time for getting the picture just right. What was I thinking? I’m definitely still learning. My camera, the lighting AND how long it will probably take. But that’s OK.
And, just in case you’re interested in the picture I was trying to replicate, just click on over to Freckle Photo for some awesome photo inspiration! She is an amazing photographer. One I think I’m going to have to follow and learn from!
This post is part of the iHomeschool Network Summer Hopscotch. For more topics, click here: