Thanksgiving Morning

Nelson Family DIY Christmas Card Photo Shoot- UnEdited

As much as I love having a professional photographer do the whole thing, I secretly love the challenge of getting a good picture of us all myself for the annual Christmas Card. It's really hard! As you'll see from the picture time-line...haha...and I don't own any photo editing software which makes it even more of a challenge, no ability to swap the heads out! I've had years where we've bagged the whole thing but living away from ALL our family I know I love getting cards from everyone and that some of our family members really count on that updated family pic to hang on the fridge so here you have it! This year we opted for Thanksgiving morning as I figured I would want everyone to look nice anyway on that day and we did FIRST thing in the morning so that once we were done, no one had to worry about how messy they got. :) To set the stage, we were in our backyard sitting on a outdoor storage bench covered with a white sheet. I was using the self timer function on my camera and bc I don't have a tripod (I keep thinking I should get one!) I had the camera sitting on a flour canister that was sitting on top of a folding table across from us. All was going ok except I couldn't figure out a good way to get Macee to look at the camera (the faces behind her were much more interesting than the tiny red light on the camera) So...Enter..the iPad. :) I honestly hadn't had much use for ours up until this point but I had the idea to have Lance take a video of me on the iPad saying "Macee, Smile Macee, Macee look over here, Macee Smile" and on and on. Then I propped the iPad up in front of the flour canister that was holding the camera and I would push play on the video, then the self timer on the camera and run back to my spot....and it worked...eventually as you will see below. Gotta love technology! 

Testing Testing

Whoops...I didn't quite run back fast enough for this one!

We have a lot of interesting head poses here (including my own odd one)...not sure what happened. haha

Taking a break to feed the baby mid-shoot

Oh I LOVE Ella's smile here if you get close enough to see! 

Maddi's got a cute herself here!

And we HAVE a WINNER! 

THIS was a CLOSE second. :)

And few last minute attempts at a kid's picture! 

Macee had had her fill! 

 Thanksgiving!

We had our traditional dinner with the Henries at our house this year so finding some craft projects to decorate the house was definitely a must. And pinterest makes it so easy. :)

Our lovely centerpieces. 

The girls helped me gather and paint sticks from outside, and color in the letters. 

Pilgrim Maddi! She made this bonnet at school. 

Helping prepare appetizers

The Feast!

Place Card Holders...supposed to be Mini Mayflowers and they have Jelly Belly's inside to weigh them down. 

Joy School At Our House- November

Ella has had so much fun with our Joy School group this year!

Fun with Macee

Mia's Family Tree Project

Maddi

After Kindergarten one day Maddi set up a little desk for herself and organized all her little supplies. She really loves her along time! She does this kind of thing all the time and I love it about her personality. 

Halloween Costumes

Cast of Characters

It's always interesting to see what costume ideas kids come up with. This year Maddi wanted to be Ariel complete with an Ariel wig. The "Wig" became quite the difficult thing to find ("Brave" was the more popular red-head this year at least according to the stores!) so we settled on an adult wig that Maddi approved. :) Mia had been reading Anne of Green Gables over the summer and decided then and there that she wanted to be Anne for Halloween. It was fun trying  to come up with a costume for this one. And again the red wigs were the theme in our house this year. :) Ella was our easiest this year as she requested a "Ballerina, princess, fairy costume" :) Too cute. 

Trunk-or-Treat at the church. My friend Dani and I with our cute little Bees! 

Maddi at her school costume parade. Unlike some personalities in our family, Maddi shies away from added attention! :) 

Ella and Brian at the school parade. These two each had their Mom's phones/cameras and started taking pictures of each other taking pictures. Hillarious. 

Mia's fun teacher, Mrs. Kaio

Mia and her friend Cera

Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood with some of our neighbors and friends. 

The girls and Kayla and Kenzie. Our good friends who moved to Colorado that day after this. It was sad to say good-bye to them and we still miss them!