Aye, yi, yi! Christmas pictures are the worst!

This afternoon when I was heading out to pick up Martin from Tree Tops, I stopped to talk to our new neighbor. It was a lovely afternoon, and she was sitting in her front yard with her three kids, tripod tipped over and camera sitting nearby. Her two boys were tearing around the lawn, wearing matching green polo shirts, and her 2 month old daughter was in an adorable Christmas frock. "The dreaded Christmas picture," I said with the "I've been there" look. She and I commiserated for a few minutes over the trials of trying to corral our children in a cute picture once a year, usually at the last minute. Why do we do it? Because a card without a picture is unacceptable and a card with a less than perfect (but more accurate) picture of our lovely children would be disastrous, at least in our holiday-stress-induced opinion. The right thing to do would be to send out a picture of Martin happy, but covered in lollipop goo and Win still in his pajamas and covered in barfaroo, as we fondly refer to his endless spitup. Instead, we try all sorts of tricks to come up with a picture that portrays our kids as impeccably clean, smiley angels. The things we do for our fans.

In honor of Christmas picture season, and to make everyone out there trying to get The Perfect Picture feel better, I submit to you the worst Christmas picture of all time. Here is the D'Andrea family at the Texas state Capitol tree lighting and sing along, trying to look festive. Merry freakin' Christmas, y'all.