Christmas Snippets: Take Two...Or Three

Do you ever have trouble summing up an entire experience - an event, a milestone, a holiday - in one definitive post?

This year, Miles experienced his very first Christmas, and we all experienced our first Christmas as a family of four. Although I'd like to say something profound about the whole thing, I'm at a loss. So instead, I've decided to take the pressure off and simply put together a bunch of posts about Christmas moments that I found funny, moving or otherwise worth mentioning.

Here goes...

I spent much of my time at our various holiday gatherings attempting to capture Miles' first Christmas on camera. Before the age of digital cameras, I suppose I would've snapped a bunch of pics, called it good, and hoped that something turned out. Those days must have been less stressful. After all, no one expected to get a perfect picture.

So if you got your film back, and grandpa looked a little tipsy while holding your baby, you'd just laugh and put that photo right on into an album. And if you took a second pic...

...and your BABY looked a little tipsy while being held by grandpa, you'd laugh even harder. It, too, would go into the album. After all, you paid to have that film developed and you're not about to throw away a picture simply because your baby looks cross-eyed and big-nosed.

Today, though, we keep snapping and checking until we get a picture that's just right...or at least good enough. And then we delete all the bad ones.

But I think I'm going to start keeping some of the bad pictures.

After all, if my parents weren't forced to keep the bad pictures, would I have this one? With me looking like a crazed lunatic, my sister looking like an overexcited nut and neither of us in focus, I'm guessing not.

Or would I have this one? It's hard to say, but my guess is that, today, someone would have seen this pic and forced us to stand there even longer until my cousin Katie figured out how to keep that Cabbage Patch doll in her arms.

But "bad" pictures are funny, often touching and very real. So keep a few around. Your kids will thank you.