The Real Family Photos – beauty and bedlam style

It’s Christmas time. The time of year when we gather our fashionista best and smile pretty for the camera. Right?

Well, the best laid family photos do not always turn out how we expected. We’ll capture our traditional family picture on Christmas eve, but in honor of my sweet friend Toni’s request to share some of our not so perfect family photos, I thought I would give you one of our bedlam moment “out takes.”

As I was redoing my blog header up above, I thought it would be fun to capture a family “beauty and bedlam” shot in action. It started out so beautifully with my amazing photographer husband helping us out.

We climbed some trees in our yard, starting getting our balance,

and having a lot of fun…

until we started hearing some cracking.

not any cracking, mind you, but a big large tree branch cracking.

(Yes, reenacted for effect)

Now before you call social services on me, you must remember these are country kids. Climbing trees is part of their make-up and these trees have been tested and tested for years. We were trying to arrange it so that it went tallest to shortest, which required my second son and me to change places. I won’t fill you in on the all the details of the conversations that took place in the process, but needless to say…bedlam.

To gain some height prospective of how high up we were, if you look in the background, you will see the roof of our chicken coop at our feet.

Now, don’t worry, our youngest daughter was safe and sound on the lower, very sturdy, branches.

As my son (yes, the same one who had the sledding accident) and I switched places (what were we thinking??), we both grabbed onto the same smaller branch for support. You see those dead limbs sticking out of the side of the tree? Yes, I know…you would never do that. Well, umm…not me either. I didn’t grab the dead branch. Nope, not me.

Well, time stood still. We knew it was coming and we fell down together.

Bless his heart, he saved his momma’s back by cushioning my fall. His leg got all cut up and my back and neck still have the scar marks. (Waking up in the next morning confirmed that I am no longer a young whipper snapper.)

After we realized that angels were truly watching over us and we were all fine, my best blogging instincts took over.

I chastised my poor hubby for not catching our fall “in action” (with which he reminded me he was only thinking about our…ah…life), and my gamer children climbed back up to reenact the event for posterity sake. I thought these would be buried in the archives of my camera forever, but mainly for those of you who know me in real life, just wanted to give you a big old chuckle.

So if those Thomas Kincade type family photos shoots just aren’t working out for you this season, have no worries.

Stop, take a deep breath and realize that sometimes those bedlam moments are the best memories ever.