Our Family Lineup

My sister Dena lives in Mexico- like, legit Mexico (not New Mexico, which confuses my kids), and we haven't been down there since her wedding. We also are well overdue on a visit to see my dad, Tori, and my grandparents, so... a spring break road trip it is! Because we're going to be leaving the country for said vacay, we needed to get passports for the whole fam. This grown up business has been intimidating to me, but like laundry- it must be done. So we have an appointment this afternoon with the passport peeps, and we're doing our best to take care of business and prepare for the trip.

As part of the passport process, we needed to get appropriate photos of the five of us. We could have gone somewhere to have them taken, but the average cost was $15 a pop, so I thought I'd try to save a bajillion bucks and do it myself.  I bought a big, white posterboard, borrowed an SD card from Derek's work, borrowed a DSLR (aka fancy pants) camera from my neighbor, and set up shop in Cora's room where the lighting was best.  The rules for the photos were many.  Besides the size and positioning specifications, we were not to smile, not wear jewelry/glasses, have nothing in our hair ponytail-wise, and more. Yikes.

After several outtakes and a bit of Photoshop editing (brightness/contrast), these were the photos we came up with. I thought they deserved a blog post. We'll call them our 2016 family photos, a la mugshot.