Dry Run

So Preston and I, as we are now all fancy and married, decided that this year we should send out a Christmas card. I wanted to send out a photo with the card, and quickly shot down everyone's suggestions of "just use one from your wedding!" because, as lovely as our wedding was, and as lovely as I felt on that day, I wanted a photo that would capture more accurately our personalities and what our life is really about (albeit making sure that I put on makeup that day and wear something festively colored). This is another way of saying that I just wanted the dogs in the picture.

Our plans to have a friend take the photo outside this weekend fell through, so last night after dinner, I turned to Preston and suggested that we just take a self-timed test photo to see if a photo inside were at all feasible for a Christmas card. I moved back the coffee table, set the camera up high on some books, took a test shot, and then ran to get in the picture myself. All in all, I think it might work (but I would still like your sage opinions, lovely readers!). The angle needs some adjusting, as we both look like Big Foot, and I have a sneaky feeling it might take forty-eight thousand takes to get both of the dogs to look at the camera simultaneously, but overall, I think I like it. I think I like it mainly because this really IS an accurate depiction of what our life is like. All four of us are crammed on the sofa in a (semi-) controlled chaos, there are shelves of books behind us, and we are in absolutely no way fancy or formal.

This isn't to say that when I have kids I won't dress them up in coordinating, monogrammed outfits (which I totally will do...and I totally already know their monograms), or spend lots of time dreaming up the perfect location for our Christmas card photo one day, but for now, for this year of new beginnings and all of the CRAZY that comes along with starting new things, I think I'm ok with the four of us scrunched together on the sofa in our apartment on a random December night. Because at the end of the day, this is our little family in our little home, and there is nowhere else I'd rather be.