Ask any photographer and they’ll say getting formal family portraits taken are so important and special. Ask any photographer how often they get their own formal family portrait taken and they will almost always say rarely.

We’re always taking everyone else’s portraits and take SO MANY informal pictures of our own family that a formal portrait just doesn’t take precedence.

However, we have made a goal to do this once a year. This year I was imagining barefoot in a grassy meadow with a mountainous background and blue sky. I scouted a couple of locations and ended up very happy with the area up against the mountains in the back corner of Alpine next to the rodeo grounds. I found the parasol a couple of days before and decided it was just what we needed.

Our friend and fellow photographer, Shannon, generously took our photos. It’s just too hard to use a tripod when you have three kids to wrangle into position and get them all looking in the right direction.

It was a feat to get Madeleine to even look at the camera. When she did, 90% of the time she was frowning. But Shannon got one!

It was easy to get Nate to look at the camera, but hard to keep him from making silly faces. Shannon got one of those, too!

Caroline was very grumpy. Maybe it was because her shirt fell out of the bag on the way out of the house and went unnoticed until I tried to get her dressed on location…Good thing she is young enough to pull off that look.

Obviously, Rob and I were a little easier to work with, but behind those smiles are tense parents with crying kids right out of the frame. Luckily, we’ve had lots of practice ignoring them

That’s it for our 2011 family portrait shoot. I’ve already been staging 2012’s shoot and I’m excited to actualize it. I’m hopeful that everyone will be fully dressed next time around. I love my family!

Here are a few more pictures from the shoot.