The Making of a Holiday Card!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

 

For many years, when our girls were young, we would take an annual Christmas picture and mail it with our Holiday card. I was the mom who, when they were growing up, never took a picture or had a camera at any important event. I have always been technologically challenged and I guess I did not want to miss out on something that was happening right before my eyes, because I was fiddling with the stupid camera. Once or twice, I did try and take a picture and it usually ended with me in a foul mood and yelling, “This _______ (rules prevent me from filling this in)  thing never works correctly!” and my husband shouting back, "Turn it on!"  In fact, neither of my girls can believe the amount of pictures I now take of Fudge and Vern and they like to remind me about the special frames I bought for them that hold their kindergarten to senior year school photos. We got them out not too long ago and it seems I lost interest on or around 7^th grade for the oldest and 4^th grade for the youngest.  I tried telling them that the sample photos that came with the frame were, in fact, their pictures, but they did not fall for that one.

 

The one picture I did take every year was for the annual Christmas card. Since I was not the best photographer, usually I had to go through three roles of film before I found one picture that would work. Yes, that was in the olden days before I even knew about digital cameras. In the beginning, I forced the girls to wear something that matched their sibling and eventually that idea was met with enough resistance it had to be discontinued. FYI: if your kids look adorable, but are shouting out, “This is so dumb!” if does not translate to a smile in a photograph.   Towards the end of our annual picture practice either girl could have shown up wearing a Christmas shirt depicting Santa and Mrs. Claus decorating their Christmas tree and Mrs. Claus asking Santa, “Got Balls?” and all I would have said is, “take you place over there by your sister.”  Sometimes, and I swear they had a private bet going to see how long it took to break me, they would start goofing around. Nothing says lasting memories and holiday cheer like your mother screaming, “I swear to God, if you two do not stop, I am going to crack you over the head with daddy’s tripod…NOW SMILE!!” 

 

Our first Christmas with Fudge was 2009 and by then, we had all had enough of trying to get one good picture every Christmas and I fired those two and hired Fudge as the model for my card. Since my oldest daughter had also gotten her French Bulldog, Bonzai, that year, we wanted to include him on the card with Fudge. Surely, I thought, dogs would be easier to work with than kids, right?  By this time, my youngest daughter was heavily into photography and so I enlisted her help in making my idea a reality. It seemed like such a simple thing. Little did we know that Bonzai came with the baggage of having a stage mother. (Think Toddlers and Tiaras)  The problem started when Megan sent us four pictures of Bonzai, via email, in his devil’s costume. We selected a picture where she had posed him on a dog bed and when Hayley took the bed out of the picture it left Bonzai with funny feet. Hayley said she would try and fix it and I said (famous last words) that no one would notice. We ordered the cards, sent Megan a copy, and my husband and I were out for a lovely lunch when we got the call.

 

Megan was very upset and wanted to know why we used a picture where her dog’s feet look deformed.  I tried to explain what happened with the dog bed, but she was too wound up to listen to a rational explanation.  She said we made her dog look like he had pig’s hooves and she thought Hayley and I should be blackballed from Photoshop.  She went on to say we did it on purpose to showcase our exceptionally beautiful Fudge.  Megan really just said Fudge, but I added the rest because she is so pretty and her paws are perfect.  I mentioned once or twice that it was just a Christmas card and we certainly had no intentions of forwarding it to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, but it did not help. Truthfully, Bonzai looked adorable and really is the sweetest dog.  Nothing I said helped, so I passed the phone to her dad.

 

My husband got on the phone and said, “Your mom and Hayley did not purposely put hooves on Pork Chop’s feet” and she yelled that wasn’t her dog’s name.  We high fived after that one and then John tried to apologize by saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean Pork Chop…I know it starts with a B…oh, I remember now...Bacon’s Feet.”  Another FYI: People, who are worried about their dog’s feet looking like hooves, do not think pig jokes are funny.  We are always searching for the silver lining, so one of us told her maybe if the card got in the right hands, Bonzai might be offered a part in a movie like Babe 2 or Charlotte’s Web.  All she said was she hoped the movie also had a part in it for two big, dumb donkeys.  When I told her that made no sense because we only had Fudge and she did not look like a donkey, she said she wasn’t talking about Fudge.  In the end, we fixed Bonzai’s feet, had her sign off on a proof, and reordered new cards at our expense. We also vowed that in the future we were either sending store bought cards or only including dogs not owned by a certain volatile daughter.

 

PS There was also a minor controversy regarding whether or not the two models were miscast in their roles for this card.

 

And now, without further ado, our 2009 (Corrected) Holiday Card:

 

[Jennifer,Chloe & Myla]

Cute!

[Phoebe's Mom]

I am adamant about sending out Christmas cards with our childrens' picture and now, of course, including Phoebe's as well.  For those of you who do not yet know, I have four children...and picture day is scheduled for this Sunday...based on previous years, please send positive thoughts my way that day.  Hopefully, it will go better than last year when my then seven year old son yelled to my then fourteen year old son that his 'crotch looked huge!' in the middle of the photo studio.  Minds out of the gutter, please, it was bulky fabric and the way he was seated that made the fabric gap.  But still.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Leslie, no one could top that card - ever!  Perhaps it is time to re-issue it!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Love it!!!   When our youngest son 'graduated' from preschool his proud papa (my DH and then family photographer) snapped an entire roll of film to commemorate the event.  However, he later discovered that he had forgotten to actually load any film into the camera!  Your DH should be happy that you even included Pork Chop, Bacon, Devil Dog in the card!  Ha!

[Deanna & Desi & Cori]

Love the story!  Love the card!  We've never done a picture Christmas Card, mostly because the months leading up to Christmas are always crazy (especially when I was teaching full time) and I could never get my act together until it was too late.  We'd resort to plain old commercial cards.  Lately, my Christmas greetings have DEVOLVED to a "Merry Christmas" as my status on FaceBook.  Just call me the Grinch!!  

[Doris, Knox & Flash]

Like you, Laurie, I have done an annual Christmas picture of my two kids.  In the past couple of years, I have been met with the same resistance you have experienced.  Last year, my son announced that he wasn't going to be in any more Christmas pictures once he turned 21.  Well, he turned 21 in January!  Ugh!  He is coming home for Thanksgiving and I am going to try my best to convince him that ONE MORE YEAR won't hurt!  I'm going to suggest that we can end it when he graduates, which will be in May 2012.  Not sure what type of bribery I will have to resort to, but I'm hoping that "so...who is paying for your Duke education??" will suffice!  Wish me luck!! (If not, Knox will be glad to fill in --- as if he really has a choice! lol)

[Leslie and Halas]

Five minutes ago, I was reading things out loud to my co-workers about the Penn State scandal.  Just now, I read this blog to myself and started laughing out loud.  I hope my co-workers don't think I'm still reading about the Penn State scandal. So thanks for making me look like a sicko.

Your Christmas card and story are great.  It's very brave of you to try to get kids or dogs to sit still.  I'm terrible about sending Christmas cards.  I've only done it once.  For over 20 years, my parents and I dressed up on Christmas Eve as Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Rudolph.  We went to friends' houses and gave presents to their kids.  OK, sometimes, it was just adults, no kids.  But that's when we'd use the bathroom and have some adult beverages.  Anyway, one year, I had my picture taken in my Rudolph suit while we were out.  Rudolph is in a bar (we always stopped at a bar), sitting in front of a poker machine, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a Miller Lite in his hand.  I decided to use it as my Christmas card with the caption, "May the holidays be filled with all your favorite vices."  I haven't tried to do a Christmas card since, because I just don't think I can top that.