~The Things Parents Do~

Yesterday, Amy and I announced a fun contest that we are going to feature on I ♥ Faces in early January.  Our first birthday is coming up soon and we thought this contest would be a cool way to start the celebration out with a bang.

Basically, each person who enters has to use the I ♥ Faces logo somewhere in their photo.  Either naturally (like writing I ♥ Faces in the sand) or by adding it to the photo with an editing program.

We began thinking about this idea several months ago.  We knew that we needed samples to give everyone an idea of what we were looking for.  And what do I do?  I wait until the night before to start working on my photo samples.

It’s like I’m still back in high school or something.


One idea I had come up with was to have the kids all around a stop sign (that I would put “I ♥ Faces” onto) and have them jumping around it like they were all excited.


Too bad I forgot to have them do that ahead of time!

While putting the kids to bed on Tuesday night I asked them if they would mind getting up a little bit early so that we could head out for the photo shoot.  They said “sure!” so the next morning we waited for the school bus to pass by our house and then took off for our shoot.

We waited for the school bus to pass because there was no way on this earth that any of us wanted to be jumping like crazy fools around a stop sign while there was the possibility that every single person on the bus might see us.

This gave us a very short 15-minute window to try to get the shot we needed.  Unfortunately for me, it was still pretty dark outside which made it almost impossible to get a non-blurry photo.



Here was the plan… 

Everyone crouches down. 

Mom says “Ready?…Set?….JUMP!!” 

And everyone jumps when they hear the word “JUMP!!!”



Here we go.  Ready?….Set?…
(They were all so serious about the “Ready…Set…” part of it.)




JUMP!!!




We must have done this at least 30 times.  The problem was that while the two older kids were fine waiting for the word “jump” to be yelled, the two younger boys just got way too excited about the whole business and took off like a shot before we were even close to the “jump” word.



So, we usually ended up with one kid all the way back on the ground, one almost to the ground and two up in the air where they were supposed to be.

But we also ended up with some good ones!




It was so stinkin’ funny…all of busting a gut watching everyone else fly through the air in their own unique way. Even while, at the same time, we prayed that no cars would pass us (they didn’t!) and that Mr. Geiss (the only neighbor in sight) wouldn’t start peeking through his curtains (we’re pretty sure he didn’t!)




I’m now thinking several things:

I’m seriously thinking that my kids might need to go into acting.  They sure put their all into each and every jump!




I’m thinking that on my list of “Things I Never Thought I’d Make My Kids Do” this photo shoot would have to rank pretty high.


And I’m thinking that I have four pretty awesome kids.  :)