Cheerful Abundance

Hoping to avoid the stress of last year’s Xmas card, we decided to start early and try to get a great photo of the girls together. What is that saying? Man plans, and God laughs? Someone was definitely laughing.

It was a gorgeous fall day, and probably the last time the girls would be wearing shorts, so we threw clean t-shirts on them and headed to the park with a camera.

Hijinks ensued.

Nihilist Swinging. We thought we would get them warmed up for some fun by swinging, but as you can see, swinging is not the way to get a smile out of anyone!

So we let them play on the playground equipment for a bit, to make sure they were in a good mood.

Where did these tall, long-legged kids come from? Where are our little babies?

Warming up for disaster.

Yeah. So … before we could get a photo of them together, they found the mud. And they were having so much fun we couldn’t bring ourselves to stop them.

“Are you muddy enough? Here, let me wipe my hands on your white shirt.”

Happy as a clam in the mud.

Wandering around, faced streaked with mud.

It doesn’t matter – we couldn’t get them to look at the camera if we tried. …

… much less get them to smile for a picture!

Of course, many family adventures end like this.  Daddy is SO MEAN, what with his “don’t eat the mud” nonsense.