Christmas Family Pictures

I love it when I get my friends' Christmas cards in the mail so I can see how cute their families are. But when you look at a picture it's fun to imagine what was happening right before it was taken and then right after. For us it was Dave and me, and my parents yelling at the boys to look up, smile, put their hands down, smile again, open their eyes, and on and on. After each picture they thought they were done and they all wanted to run off and play, but we wanted enough to choose from since we knew there would only be one out of a hundred where all three of them were looking okay at the least. But if you look at each boy in this picture you will see a little of who they are. People will sometimes ask if Trevor and Colin are twins (seriously?) and we hear all of the time how much alike they all look ("they are cookie cutter kids"). But when I see them I see three boys who couldn't be more different. Sure they all have some similarities because they learn things from one another. But I think it's so fun to have kids and then get to know them. They are never what you expected, never what you imagined and hoped. But they always surprise me with different things. I think I don't take enough time to really watch them. When I do take time, especially when they don't know they are being watched, they do something to make me proud that they are mine. I used to want girls. I used to want to have the yellow bedroom, ballet slippers, dolls and dresses. But these three boys have been a surprise to me, a good surprise. Sometimes they make me crazy, but most of the time they love me even because of my faults and they teach me to do the same for them.