{"id":1286,"date":"2010-12-11T03:44:55","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T03:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.wordpress.com\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2010-12-11T03:44:55","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T03:44:55","slug":"happy-holidays-from-the-real-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/11\/happy-holidays-from-the-real-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Holidays from the Real Us!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every holiday season, we have a tradition of dressing all the kids up in some fancy clothes and taking them someplace suitably festive to take holiday pictures.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes it’s a nearby casino resort that puts up an indoor sleigh for photos.\u00a0 We take pictures and then go to their buffet restaurant for dinner.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes it’s a half empty mall.\u00a0 Once it was our friend Tiffany’s house, because it’s marvelously festive and incredibly tidy.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It can’t ever be our house, because our house is definitely not in the least bit incredibly tidy.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, once we used our house — we put Alex in a gift bag in front of the tree and put the bigger kids all around.\u00a0 But mostly we use ultra-decorated fancy spots!
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So this year, I was thinking about all the things I had to do to get ready… find coordinating outfits, pick a location, get us all there, make everybody happy for long enough to get a decent shot of four very wiggly kids…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And I decided to break with tradition.\u00a0 Enough of that.\u00a0 People know by now what our kids look like all dolled up.\u00a0 And plenty of people have probably forgotten completely what Daryl and I look like, since we’re never in the shots!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I wanted all of us, and I wanted it real.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I told everybody to dress however they wished, and to wear something that summed them up — plus a fun hat.
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I thought for sure the boys would want to be superheroes, but Jack picked a cool skeleton drummer shirt (with a top hat) and Alex opted for warmth!\u00a0 This is Minnesota after all!\u00a0 He topped it all off with a jingle bell elf hat that suited him perfectly.
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Victoria wore a prom dress with jeans, a metallic scarf and a cowboy hat.\u00a0 Anna picked a dress, top hat and a poncho that a friend knitted for her.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Daryl picked the tux he wears to play “The Gambler” at the old fashioned Christmas events at a nearby historic site, plus a Santa hat.\u00a0 And I picked some high heeled boots, a jaunty cap, jeans and a shirt that said, “I am so blogging this.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

(I love that shirt.\u00a0 It sums me up!)
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And then we marched to our front yard, let the kids climb a snow drift, and set the self timer on my camera. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Several sets of bursts and crazy laughter later, we had our holiday pictures.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I kind of love them.\u00a0 They’re us!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s some of my favorites…
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And here’s the one we went with for our holiday cards…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Yep, that’s us!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Holidays!
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Every holiday season, we have a tradition of dressing all the kids up in some fancy clothes and taking them someplace suitably festive to take holiday pictures. Sometimes it’s a nearby casino resort that puts up an indoor sleigh for photos.\u00a0 We take pictures and then go to their buffet restaurant for dinner. Sometimes it’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[168,171],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}