Look at these two smiling beauties. Miss Cali is still perfecting her smile, of course, so this “look” has become somewhat familiar, but in reality, getting that “perfect shot” of your child or children is not always is not always (if ever) a “one take” deal.

 

The idea was simple: Get both kids to hold the first decoration being hung on the tree. The truth is, before we took this shot, a musical penguins toy had won Cali’s unwavering favour and replaced any interest that she may have had previously about being in this planned picture, a small tradition we do every year in the Jensen Family.

Chase was, as always, good to go!

Cali was all over the place because we had to hide the aforementioned musical penguin toy…

She was practically begging anyone who would listen to give it to her…

There was crying…

And more crying …

Lots of crying, basically…

But eventually…

Faced with the promise that she could have the musical penguin toy back…

She began to soften…reluctantly (as the tears indicated)…

And for a brief moment in time…after mustering everything in her power…

We got the smile that we are used to…

And then some more crying…

But we had the shot! So we gave it a little treatment and voila!

The Perfect Shot!

The whole process took about 15 minutes and at points Chase was upset and tried to tell us to just forget about it, but no, we HAD to have the shot!

We immediately let Cali play with the musical penguin toy again, which proceeded to hold her captive for a full 2 or 3 more minutes all strung together in a row before she was on to something else. 🙂

Ahhh…the “magic” of Christmas.