Laurie Sachs Photography

Now that all the cards have been sent and received I can share my fam­ily Christ­mas card! Since Jason and I started our fam­ily I’ve given a lot of thought to the Christ­mas cards we send out, try­ing to cap­ture the essence of where we are as a fam­ily that year. I usu­ally remote it and take our Christ­mas pho­tos myself, a fact that amazes our friends and has pro­duced some com­i­cal results over the years. This year I felt our fam­ily was at a cross­roads. Our first born is in high school, 14 years old… he’s grown two or three inches since these pho­tos were taken in late Sep­tem­ber. He’s 5’11″, taller than his mom and quickly catch­ing up to his dad. Our daugh­ter is 12 and in jr high, also has grown two or three inches since these pho­tos were taken, near­ing 5’6″ now. Our lit­tle ones are 7 and 4, attend­ing preschool and ele­men­tary, not babies any­more. I really felt the need to freeze time, catch us right now with all my chicks in my nest. I NEEDED to hire a pho­tog­ra­pher. My old­est son didn’t under­stand, why would you hire some­one when you take such amaz­ing pic­tures of us? Because I can’t give myself what I give to oth­ers, I can’t cap­ture that con­nec­tion, that essence of “us” with a remote. I turned to Mindy Har­ris of Pas­tel Pho­tog­ra­phy in Char­lotte North Car­olina, who gra­ciously flies around the coun­try pho­tograph­ing other pho­tog­ra­phers fam­i­lies. These pic­tures are every­thing I hoped they would be, us frozen in time, crazy, funny, chaotic, perfect.