family portraits...

My mom has been talking about getting family portraits done with my whole family since we got ours taken in 2011.  I can't believe it has been 4 years.  Look at my babies.  Look at how young I look.  Sigh.

For whatever reason, we never took the time to plan it and with four families and fourteen people it does take planning.  Due to a variety of reasons, my dad has bladder cancer being the main one, we decided that we were going to do it this year.  We checked everyone's calendar and found one Saturday in the whole summer that worked.  One, for goodness sakes.  So we contacted my friend Becca, Becca Neufeld Photography, from church and we booked it.

We originally thought of having our pictures taken in a park but then decided on the University of Delaware's campus.  My parents have lived in Newark Delaware since 1968, my dad taught at the UofD for 38 years, my sister, her husband and I all graduated from there and my nephew is attending there right now.  So it is part of our family story.  Plus it is so beautiful.

Prior to the shoot, we sent Becca a list of the poses that we wanted and combinations of family or people in each picture.  Becca was so great to work with and was able to accommodate all of our requests.  I'm so glad we finally managed to get this scheduled.  Now I'm going through the pictures trying to determine how many is too many to order.

 

Aren't my parents cute?  They have been together for almost 60 years and married for 53.  I just love how she captured them together and with all their grandkids.  And I just love the one of me and my sisters all throwing up gang signs.  It was totally spontaneous and got an 'Moooom' from all the older kids.  Too funny!

There are so many amazing pictures from this photo shoot that it was hard to pick from the disk she gave us and come up with just a few of my favorites to post here.  I love them all so much!  It just makes me happy to have actual portraits of my entire family.  I do love candids but there is something special about memorializing your family in portraits.  And I'm so glad that you no longer only have one indoor option, while I'm glad to have the totally staged Olin Mills pictures from my childhood, it's awesome that talented women (and men) will do location family shoots.  We can't recommend Becca enough.  If you are local and in the market to have professional portraits taken of your family, I urge you to go check out her website, Becca Neufeld Photography.  She posted a mini photo-shoot special on her facebook page the other day and I actually checked the calendar to see if we could fit it in our schedule. 

This last photo is hands down my absolute favorite.  I've already ordered a large canvas of it to hang in our living room.  I just love how she captured our family.  It makes me smile to look at it and see that Becca was able to capture all of our personalities in one picture.  It is also a gift that everyone is looking and smiling.  Which is not something I can ever take for granted being the mom of a special needs child.

Before the photo shoot I sent everyone an email about Grace and the fact that if you were in a picture with her it was not your job to make her smile and / or look.  But that you should hold your pose and let the people outside of the picture attempt to get her attention.  As you can tell by the photos, Grace did an amazing job during the entire photo shoot.