Actually, he also used a few other words to get us to show off our pearly whites: the classic ‘cheese!’, ‘guacamole!’, and ‘peaches!’ (My daughter Hannah had to remind me of that one!)
Of course, you may be wondering who said this and why….
When we visited with my extended family over the Christmas holiday, we had an in-house portrait session done in my sister Denise's home (thanks, Sis!) by none other than Robert Matthewson, a photographer for many years, who did both my wedding almost 20 years ago as well as my sister's wedding almost 10 years ago. So, it was basically like a family reunion extraordinaire with "Robby" as our host photographer. We've known Robby since we were in school and church together.
Before the session started, we asked Robert what we should call him. He said that "Robby" was fine; it just reminded him of what era we're from since that was his childhood name. It was so cool to see him again after all these years. And we had the best time, hilariously so.
Now, this photo session was at my Mom's request since none of my family likes having their picture taken. Mom just loves photos of family. She keeps small photo albums sitting on either side of her place at her dining room table with pages open to photos of her and my husband Bill, one of me and my sis, and ones of her grandkids. So photos mean the world to Mom. Thus, the photo session.
Up front, Mom had a few pictures in mind for the occasion: one photo of everyone in our clan, including our newest member, my niece Rebecca, who is 3 1/2 years old. The last photo that was taken of all of us was from 3 1/2 years ago when we went to visit in the spring. That was before Rebecca was born. So this updated picture was of utmost importance to Mom. She also likes having one with all of us girls in it. Last time she dubbed it for Mother's Day.
Well, that's where it started. But once we got going, we almost couldn't stop, ‘til we had every conceivable combination of family members. Once we had the whole family done, which was quite an accomplishment with 10 faces, hands, legs, and 3 sets of braces to contend with; there was the update with my family, which we managed a nice shot for.
Next, we decided to get all of the girls (again); then all of the guys (3 with Dad, my husband Bill and Uncle Jay). This was a first.
Then there were the cousins together. We managed to get all four of them smiling pretty sitting on a couch with their heads together. Robby tried one with all of them on the floor with their heads meeting in the middle, but the light was too bright for my niece, Elena, so we scratched that pose.
Then my sis decided it would be nice to have a “Sister” pose; we hadn’t had one since we were young adults as a gift to Mom and Dad.
Then the other sisters, my two daughters, teamed up for some shots together. This was where Robby really shone with his sense of humor, as he kept calling Hannah “Gertrude” and then encouraged them, despite wanting to strangle each other, to try to make nice for the picture, at least. He had Hannah laughing so hard, she had her head down, trying to gain her composure. We did manage to get a very sweet shot with the two of them smiling sincerely. Priceless, of course.
The original ‘nuclear’ photo was done with Mom, Dad, Denise, and me.
Then it was Mom and Dad, the patriarch’s of the family. There was the smoochy one, encouraged by Robby, then some lovey ones, which turned out really nice.
At that point, I think we were all spent from laughing, posing, and posing some more. Then it was time to see all the shots on my sister’s TV which was cool. One of them had to be viewed sideways, which made for picking a pose interesting. Then there was one with the 3 guys, where my brother-in-law Jay had black dots blinking over his eyes, making him look like a space alien. That really got the laughter rolling. It was quite a distraction in attempting to pick the best pose. But we managed!
Jay was super helpful with writing down all the numbers of the poses we picked for each family as we went through the session on the TV screen. It was 11 pm by the time we were all finished, and then it was time for my family to head back to the hotel.
We thanked Robby for his terrific attitude, hilarious sense of humor, and for making our photo session so memorable.
This was one of the many family Christmas ‘memories’ for 2008 from our Christmas road trip, which included driving from Texas to New Jersey with a couple of stops in between that I’ll share in a future posting or two.
Hope you enjoyed this posting, and don’t forget to ‘smile!’ in your next photo session. Hope yours will be as memorable as ours was.
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