Family Photo, 2010

We've spent the last fortnight thinking about traditions, and which we would like to introducte in our family. One that I would like to stick with is taking a family photo every year. We go for a best-out-of-seven approach after I've spend five minutes asking Tara nicely to pose, then threatened that there would be no dinner until AFTER she had kindly come over (and promised a photo-free time zone of one week after). The pics look like this:
Pictures 1-4: Mummy is in slippers.
Pic 1: Jose looks a bit overwhelmed. Hard light, harsh on our very first Christmas tree.
Pic 2: Mum has a bad hair moment. Hard light, as above. Just not fair on the tree.
Pic 3: Tara's eyes closed.
Pic 4: Leo's eyes closed. It really is time I started working on that post-baby fat.
Pictures 5-7: Mum's slippers have been discarded and appear at the right side of the picture. Mum is in cow socks instead. Nice.
Pic 5: Tara not looking.
Pic 6: Does Jose want to strangle me? Why else could his hands move in on my throat?
Pic 7: Are those cows part of the family? And actually, Jose is in slippers too, and the kids are entirely without shoes.

Talk about a spontaneous snap of a family in holiday spirits... I'll go with picture number two. Slippers and socks all around, baby fat and a two month old Leo who's not yet sure what to make of his family. Jose bemused, Alex (having a bad hair moment and) holding her baby, and Tara standing by her Mummy, holding her baby brother's hand.

Family by Christmas Tree, Jan 2010

And for a more complete portrait, here's a family snapshot. At breakfast (holiday muffins and weekend pancakes): We're downgrading from slippers and socks to pyjamas. But that's us, at the beginning of 2010: Improvised, informal, but connected and contented, and very fond of daddy's pancakes.

Family at Breakfast, Dec 2009

(There. Another potential family tradition started.)