Little Lady Tea Party Photos

As a continuation to my last post, you may now understand why asking Burke to try another family photo shoot up the canyon this month was vetoed immediately.  However, I really wanted pictures of Darcie at this sweet age before she transforms from baby to toddler over night.  And then I realized we hadn't taken a picture of just Daphne professionally since she was about 20 months.  Burke agreed that as long as he didn't have to be involved, he would support a few pictures of the girls.  

I had everything planned out and timed perfectly!  The day would look like this.  Daphne to preschool - Darcie takes a rocking 2 hour morning nap - pick Daphne up and head straight to the store to pick up cake for the cake smash - feed girls nutritious snacks in car - meet Lauren and head up canyon - take perfect pictures of happy children in 30 minutes - picnic with Lauren and the kids to finish up a lovely morning.  Finally, I would have a photo session turn out just the way I imagined it.  

Except...that from the moment we woke up the day of the photos, everything went wrong.  Darcie woke up way earlier than usual, but I felt like she would still be okay with a good morning nap.  However, a neighbor in an unusual and sad circumstance called and asked me to watch their baby for the morning while Daphne was at school.  I wanted to help, so although I worried about how it might affect our plans, I said yes. She offered to bring Daphne home for me too, which I thought would simplify things.  After 30 minutes, the poor little baby had a freak out and screamed at the top of his lungs for about 45 minutes which made it impossible for Darcie to take her nap.  The neighbor was then 30 minutes late dropping Daphne off, at which point the girls were both starving.  By the time they were semi-fed and loaded in the car, we were already over an hour behind schedule with a baby who hadn't slept.  I had also misunderstood the location of our shoot and thought it was 5 minutes up the canyon, but it ended up being about 20.  It took us a while to set everything up, so by the time we were all ready, Darcie had been up for almost 7 hours!  Poor baby had weary red circles around her eyes and she was super emotional.  And of course Daphne wouldn't smile normal.  We tried to do a few close ups of the girls side by side, but Darcie was starting to flip.  By the time we got to the cake smash she was beyond exhausted and started bawling her eyes out.  Which was so sad to me because she is 95% of the time such a happy, chill baby and normally would have hammed it up.  Even with a sugary cake in front of her, she just put her hand on top of the frosting and screamed her head off!  Game over.

On the way home I stopped at Burke's office and tried not to cry and I'm sure he tried very hard not to say, "I told you so!"  Haha!  However, my sweet friend, Lauren (who took these at 6 months preggo by the way!) is so talented and she was able to work magic on several of the photos.  Here is a sampling below (minus the cake smash pictures which I want to save for Darcie's birthday next week).

Now, you may be asking yourself, "If Emily keeps having such awful experiences taking family pictures, why does she keep doing it?!"  And I have to answer that although getting pictures done can be a major pain the butt, they are really the only tangible thing that we will carry with us throughout this life.  Our furniture, clothing, decorations and homes will change many times over the years, but our pictures and videos will be the only things we can look back on to capture the passing of time as well as a token for family members to remember us by when we are gone.  I think that's why they are so important to me, despite the headache.

Thank you Lauren for your wonderful talent and for being so patient with me and the girls on that crazy day.  You are such a fantastic friend, photographer and person!  If you are in Southern Utah and need a photographer, I would highly recommend Lauren.  You can see some of her beautiful work at http://www.laurenbakerphotography.com or Lauren Baker Photography on Facebook.  You will die over the Huckleberry Finn photos she took of her dapper son Porter this summer.  So creative and precious!