Annual Calendar Pictures

Last year I discovered that Vistaprint.com has the best priced personal calendars and they do a pretty nice job of it too. You upload your images to one of the many templates available and they ship you the calendars to then, as we do, mail off as stocking stuffers to grandparents. I usually end up waiting until after Thanksgiving to finish compiling the calendar so I have a nice chronological image gallery of Padon for the previous year presented. I didn't do half bad this year in getting a nice harvest picture of Padon in our backyard, but getting the "Christmas/ Season's Greetings" picture has been painful. Padon won't smile for the camera anymore like he used to and thinks it is funny to say "Noooooooo..." (shaking head and looking at you out of the corner of his eye smiling in a crooked evil grin), when you ask. I think I will see if I can't get a free picture out of Picture People or Sears, I think he would smile for them. It's too late for the calendar, but not for the Christmas cards...

The Harvest pictures came out great:

This picture, above, is the one I used for the Calendar for November.


This was a good picture, albeit blurry. The smiles come from the fact that the Santa in his lap is a dancing Santa, is dancing, and has been crammed between Padon's legs. So, dancing, Santa is forced to stand up as his arms pump up and down. Padon found it hysterical that Santa would right himself, only so Padon could cram him back down in his lap.

So after taking Santa away in an attempt to get a clear picture the blanket had to be introduced or tears were going to ensue. Sigh...
And in my last ditch effort, before I started to cry out of frustration, I got this picture as Padon laughed hard saying "I bonka my head in da tree!!!" This is the picture for December in the Calendar.

Sigh, I miss the days of easy smiles and camera friendly moments...