Friday, June 13, 2008

Blessed with cheesy smiles

I am having an especially difficult time with this lately...you tell your kids to "smile" and you end up with ultra-cheesy pictures - way more than you know what to do with.

I'd love tips on how to get them to SMILE - you know, real smiles. Emma is queen of doing this, as my dad recently realized after he took 100 pictures of her and one or two of them were cute enough to really do anything with. The rest? Fake smiles. We distract them, try to get them talking, tickle each other and do bunny ears. But such things don't get the real smiles to come out. However, sometimes these silly grins are just as fun as the sincere ones, and I treasure these pictures just as much!

So...here's to all the cheesy grins we are blessed with on a daily basis!



5 comments:

Natalie N said...

Okay, the "quotables" on the side are too much fun. Love them all. Your kids are so clever!

As far as the smiles go, I love their little smiles! I wouldn't call them cheesy, but I guess only a mother knows her children's most genuine smiles. One time we were at a Halloween party and there was a photographer there. We were attempting our first family picture with 3 kids. He gave a ball to Cole and had Cole toss it to him a few times. He instructed us parents to just smile and look straight into the camera. Then he pretended to throw the ball to Cole and snapped our family picture instead. The kids were anticipating the fun of catching the ball and the photographer was able to catch some pure, genuine smiles from those kids. I was impressed with that method I had never seen before.

So yeah, that was really long-winded, but maybe that's an idea you can use next time you are taking pictures of the kids or your dad is trying to take a family picture. Happy snapping!

hales said...

I'll take those "cheesy grins" any day.

Jamie said...

I think this cheesy smile thing is a stage. Grant closes his eyes and smiles every time he sees the camera. Its hard work to catch him with his eyes open.

The Howard Bolton Family said...

I agree with the above comment about not thinking that Emma's and Tyler's smiles are cheesy. I think they are adorable.

heidi said...

It is so hard to get a good smile. So I've stopped trying all together. Now I settle for a blank stare or a really good crying fit (I have way too many of those pictures to admit!).