You may have guessed by now that the Stones are a photo-happy bunch. Christmas morning made this painfully clear as a substantial number of the gifts were photos… of ourselves. Some would call this narcissism. I would call it wringing the last drop out of the wedding photos.

And of course, Christmas means the Stone Family Christmas Photo, into which James was initiated this year.  The Christmas photo is a big deal around our house – remember that year it snowed and the year mom and I rocked the matching outfits?

Here are a couple of this year’s shots.

Don’t we look so happy and smiley?

Confession: very rarely do you get as annoyed with your family as when taking family photos. Here is what approximately 75% of the photos actually looked like:

Because the reality is that in between portraits of familial perfection and smiling faces, there is a lot of complaining, a lot of whining, a lot of griping, and a lot of mounting annoyance with each other.

Still… I would rather be butting heads with these people than pretty much anyone else.

Sidenote: Lyman is an epic photo-bomber. Do you have one in your family, that person who has staked their identity on never smiling in photos? Behold the proof, a random sample from the family shots.

Of course, he was nothing but smiles for these photos, the ones with his girlfriend who got to spend Christmas with us. Apparently he prefers not to sabotage all of her photos.

Hope you all had wonderful Christmases with your family!