My Story...

 

The Unphotogenic Family...

By: Caitlin Heinen

It all started on Christmas Eve. Mom was set on taking a good, unique family Christmas photo. In the last couple of years, our family photos have been terrifying. Tomorrow is Christmas and mom needs a family photo to give to the relatives. Every year she gives out a couple of ideas she has in mind and sees what idea the rest of the family likes. Most of the time she has an idea she doesn't tell us and that is what we end up doing. Obviously, in the last couple years, her ideas have not been good.

                This year mom gave us three ideas. She told us we could do a family picture dressed in Christmas tree costumes standing outside; we could be wrapped in gold garland holding bells, or dressed as characters from the Grinch.  When mom told us her ideas, we all stood in silence. None of the ideas sounded appealing to us. All we wanted was a normal family picture where we line up in normal clothes in front of our Christmas tree, but no, mom needs something extravagant. After bickering with each other about different ideas we told mom about, we decided to go with the Grinch characters. None of us were happy about it, but we knew we had to do it for mom. Mom then told us she would go shopping for our outfits.

                Mom came back about 3 hours later with the supplies. She started to take out what she got and it looked like nothing we needed. She took out five big boxes, wrapping paper, Santa Clause hats, bows for Christmas trees, ect. We asked mom what all this was. She explained that she changed her idea and we were now going to be dressed as Christmas presents. This was now worse than the Grinch characters, and we thought that was bad enough. Mom went to wrap the boxes and the rest of us sat and talked with each other. We told ourselves that it is just one picture and we just have to do it for mom. Mom came back with the finished products and we got dressed.

                We all got dressed and came downstairs to see mom had everything set up. She has us line up and stagger the way she wanted us, My two younger siblings were in the front, my dad was in the middle back, and my mom and I each stood on the side of my dad. Mom went to set the timer on the camera, then quickly ran back to get in her position. The camera took the picture and we got it over with. The picture was still very different and none of us enjoyed it, but mom was content and that’s who we did it for. We brought the picture to the relatives on Christmas day and they thought it was great! So that was just another unique family photo for the books, and we could only imagine what the years to come would look like.