I have been dying to show you these pictures.  However, I took these pictures of my kids and their cousins for a gift for my mother-in-law for Christmas and so I had to keep them a secret for a while.  I love the fact that both of our families live within 15 minutes and while I wish we could all see each other more often (what a great problem to have, right?) we are so blessed to have everyone close by.  I also love that I am able to do pictures with both sets of cousin every year or every other year.  

Sometimes they are the toughest sessions I do because my kids are used to me having a camera all of the time and they don’t always love to cooperate.  This session was pretty painless though! 

Tebow- everyone’s favorite dog also made it into the pictures.

 

Aren’t these girls so beautiful?

This picture is the perfect depiction of their personalities.

 

The kids are all getting so big.  I can’t believe that my oldest niece is now driving on her own and is almost half-way done with high school.  And my oldest has now surpassed everyone in the height department, including me!!

These five get along so well and they clearly love each other and love to spend time together.  And I am pretty sure that they could all pass for siblings.  Paul and Chris have been asked if they are brothers (and even twins) and Stacey and I are always taken for sisters.  No one ever guesses that Stacey and Chris are the ones who are actually related.  The blue eyes, dark hair and freckles are dominate in this family!

We had to have a little fun too.  

 

After we did the “serious” pictures, we decided to have a little fun.  I had done a paint session with some good friends last year and we thought it would be fun for our kids to do it.  So I found different colored (washable) paint, brushes and mason jars.  The kids got to pick their colors and then it was a free-for-all.  Here they are all nice and clean.

They had so much fun.  It was fun to see their personalities come out.  Any guesses as to who was most destructive with the paint?  

You guessed it….Tanner.  Every picture has his wild facial expressions and has him sneaking around and nailing everyone with red paint.

Jameson wins the award for most likely to paint himself instead of everyone else.  (Notice how much green paint he has on himself and how he was even painting his face while I was taking the picture).

Makai wins the stand-offish award as he stood as far away as he could to avoid paint all the while flinging paint as far as he could to get everyone else.  (You can tell by the fact that he is missing from many pictures).

McKenzie wins the award for best hair.  She has the most beautiful hair and I think she ended up with the most paint in her hair.

Ashlynn wins the award for still managing to look like a gorgeous model even while covered in paint.  I mean seriously…..isn’t she stunning?

I took SO many pictures during this session.  I usually edit and deliver around 100 images to my clients.  This one…..I had 232.  Can you blame me?  These pictures are so much fun!

The most stressful part of this session was the aftermath.  We did this in a park and it was a bit chilly in the shade.  By the time we were done the kids were wet with paint and were really chilly.  I brought baby wipes but those were severely insufficient for our needs.  Then the idiotic photographer accidentally locked her keys in the car and that complicated everything!  The kids all ended up at my house to shower and try to get all of the paint out of every crevasse of their bodies.  And you wouldn’t believe what my bathrooms looked like after 5 kids that were covered in paint were done cleaning up.

This kind of session is not for the faint of heart or for the type-A neat freak.  But it was so much fun and the pictures are fantastic so it was totally worth it in my opinion!  Don’t they look so happy and cute??

Who is up for a paint session?  I would love to do more!  I am thinking as we get closer to mother’s day I might do a “cousin” special.  What do you think?

For more pictures visit www.photolilo.com or my Facebook page.