family love.

please excuse the fact that i'm hardcore cheesin' in this pic

over christmas my family had family photos taken because we literally don't have any pictures of my entire family despite the fact that there have been two weddings and we can coordinate our clothing without seeming too matchy-matchy.

since we were having the pictures taken on a bridge we had to get a bit creative with poses so we weren't all just standing in a line for all of them. we had the classic jumping pictures. we had mini-vignette pictures that included myself, my mom and my sister-in-law taking a selfie (awesome.)  and there were some "couples" pictures (here is where you can shed a tear for me since i'm single and i didn't get a couples pic.)

one of my favorites, though, was the picture (posted above) where we are all holding a sign that has our favorite christmas song written on it in our own handwriting. it's personal and says so much about our personalities:

mom: "mary did you know?"- she is clearly the best Christian of us all. and she loves kenny rogers.
dad: "it's christmas vacation"- we had just watched 'national lampoon's: christmas vacation' like we do every year and he sings along every time. he also drew a little tree because he had spaced his words poorly.
brother: "baby, it's cold outside"- i guess we all know where his head is. also, it's in the movie 'elf.'
sister-in-law: "12 days of christmas"- apparently she likes to count. and repetition.
me: "i celebrate the day"- relient k song, definitely some of matt thiessen's better work.
sister: "come on, ring those bells"- we used to sing this in the church i grew up in. the best part was when they gave the little kids bells to ring and they literally all stopped caring about singing and focused solely on making the most noise with their bells.
brother-in-law: "frosty the snowman"- i am guessing this is because he grew up in the south and never experienced snow?

what's your favorite christmas song?

xo
ps. if you're in nashville and need pictures taken, i highly recommend blue dahlia photography! great work, great people. and they're not even paying me to say this.