Photos by Ruth

The Irishman took a whole week off for Thanksgiving this year. What he didn’t mention was his real motive behind the time off. This week has been devoted to Christmas-ing our lives! He is one of those people who gets the Christmas bug early. We have agreed to wait until Thanksgiving to start the festivities, and he takes it seriously!

The first order of business was taking pictures for our Christmas card. Last year we took pictures at the beach when my mom was in town. He LOVES these photos. All year long he has been working on ideas for recreating or “topping” last year’s photos. I caught him googling Christmas card ideas in July.

(This is his favorite picture from last year)

The first order of business was finding someone to take the pictures. My husband asked Ruth months ago if she would mind taking our pictures. We were both thrilled when she agreed!

Up first was to recreate the poster. It was this sight that had strangers on the beach taking out their cell phone cameras.

We weren’t sure how to show off Sean. He is only (almost) 4 months old, so sitting and standing were out of the question. We tried a basket.

It wasn’t long before we gave up on that idea.

Ruth took about 400 pictures for us. We have spent the last few days going through them and trying to decide what to use for Christmas cards. The Irishman ordered prints today. I’m pretty sure he is hoping to leave them up year-round.

A trip to the beach like this is not complete without an outfit change. We have framed some of these pictures from last year, so we tried to recreate that as well. By this point the kids had had enough, but you can see how our family has grown!

I’m not sharing our Christmas card pictures just yet, but this is the 12x18 inch poster that will be hanging in my husband’s office beginning next week.

Expect more pictures to follow soon. The family shots are lovely, but some of the other ones are just spectacular! Ruth as a talent and we are grateful that she was willing to accept the challenge of taking pictures with Santa hats, a toddler, and an infant.

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Ruth also took the pictures I used to make my new blog header. It may still be in the mid-80s, but we are feeling festive with all these photos!