Closet Photographers, Non-Coordinated Outfits, Negative 30 Degree Weather = Our First Christmas Family Photos!!

So let's just say I know how to pick my friends.  And I know how to use and abuse them.  And they never even realize they've been had.  Let me give you an example.  I have a one friend who is a closet photographer.  (As in she's uber talented, but is dumb and hasn't come out of the "I'm not good enough" closet yet.)  But once I found out this juicy detail about her, I planted the seed.  The seed about how us Funstons, despite how vain we may be (I mean come on. Take one look in our home at the number of photos of ourselves there are, and you'll agree.), don't have any "good" photos of the three of us.  (Well, that part is true.  We only have good pictures of Bryant with McKenna.  No good ones of the three of us or of me with her.  OKAY!  So maybe I just wanted more photos of myself...geez.)

Anyway, my friend Lacey agreed to take some Christmas photos of our family, and I was quite jolly to say the least.  I went to church that morning, prayed I had a good hair day, came home and in the good Christian way started bossing Bryant on what we need to wear.  The decision was that he and I would wear jeans with a black top and McKenna Rayne would wear red with black pants.  That way her outfit would contrast with our black tops and still be "Christmas-y".  Well, it turns out that Bryant doesn't have a black shirt that was warm enough to go outside or nice enough for these type of photos.  And it also turns out that McKenna needed a coat to go outside, but doesn't have a red one.  Damn.  Two strikes.  It also turns out that it had rained for about a week straight prior to this day and everything outside was super wet.  We had planned on taking photos outside at the Botanical Gardens here in Memphis, because its super pretty and would be the perfect setting for outdoor photos....had the sky been blue and the ground not sopping.  Ugh.  Three strikes.

Anyway, I got over it really quickly and decided we would still meet Lacey to take the photos, since I knew we wouldn't have another chance before Christmas.  And besides, I needed to mail out our Christmas card ASAP since everyone who was to get one was undoubtedly already sitting at their mailboxes just waiting for ours to arrive!  I know I would have been.  So off we headed to the Botanical Gardens.  Upon our arrival, there were a couple technical difficulties with the camera, but Lacey took care of those with her new-camera-battery-purchasing-skills.  So we were good to go.

Despite my O.C.D.ness with the fashion coordinating, despite the nasty dirty Memphis rain, and despite camera battery mishaps, our photos turned out beautiful.  Lacey did an amazing job and I couldn't be happier with the ending results.

And no worries, I was able to get the Christmas cards in the mail in plenty of time!  ;-)