The Annual Family Christmas Photo

Every year my mom thinks of this "great" thing for us to do for our yearly family photo to be included in the Christmas cards she sends out to everyone. Usually these photos consist of us being match-y in some way or another, and there is always hilarity that ensues when we try to take the photo.

A while back I remember we tried to take a photo of ourselves in front of our house. The resulting pictures were hilarious. In fact, I thought they were so funny I made a Facebook album of them complete with commentary. CLICK HERE if you want to see the album.

Well this year, we decided to take our own photo again (as opposed to last year when we had a professional take the pictures and they turned out fabulous) to save some money. My mom got us all hats that were made to look like different animals (don't worry, you'll see everyone else's in a minute).

Cameron modeling his hat.

Cameron trying to be serious in his koala hat.

Apparently, no one in my house owns an actual camera anymore (because we all just use our cell phones) except for me. Only, I forgot mine and I wasn't going to drive 15 minutes back to my apartment just to get the camera and come back and take one picture.

So my dad pulls out his ridiculously old digital camera. No really, it's old. It only goes up to 3 megapixels and the battery is so unique for it that they don't even sell that kind of battery anymore (we looked) and my dad couldn't find one in the house either.

However, my little sister has a camcorder that takes pictures, so we decide to use that. Only her camcorder is kind of cheap and doesn't really take the best pictures:

See? It's kind of a bluish tint. (Also, now you can see the other hats).

I should mention that all during this time we're trying to figure out the flash and the timer on my sister's camera and we're arguing about where people should stand etc. After we decide the bluish pictures are not going to be okay (ok so my mom decides this), I say that we just use one of our phones because it'll have a higher quality and it won't be blue. So I download an app that has a self-timer (the first one that was free) and just set my phone on the tripod and click the button and run back over to get in the picture.

This is our first... only my Dad's making a weird face.

Only after we stand there for a minute, we realize that we don't know when the phone takes the actual picture since none of us are staring at the screen (so we can't see the countdown) and there's no light that flashes on the opposite side to let us know. So we try it again:

You should know that Cameron ALWAYS makes some silly face in every single one of our family pictures. It bugs the crap out of my mom.

So then we decide to take a silly picture. You know, cause that's how my family is. We enjoy being funny. Only we're not quite sure when the timer goes off again, so we think we've waited long enough and so I go check and find out:

Yeah... hadn't waited long enough.

 So we try the silly picture one more time, only I wait to see the countdown start so I can count it in my head so we know we've waited long enough. And this is the final result:

Ahhh I just love it when my family tries to take pictures together. It's always an adventure.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, Y'ALL!!