Photo Shoot

Brothers, originally uploaded by Reid Pierce.

It's always interesting trying to get the perfect Christmas card shot. Especially when there's a squirmy toddler involved. Throw in a few dogs and it's a downright fiasco. This won't be this year's winner, but it was too cute to collect dust.

Justin was out for Thanksgiving week and, as always, it was wonderful having him here. He pushed his little brother up and down the hall on his toddler car only about 3,569 times. They made faces, played peekaboo and rolled on the floor together. And we did all those other wonderful holiday things like decorating cookies, playing Scrabble and building a giant working model roller coaster out of K-nex.



I would like to add that Anne playing Scrabble is almost unheard of. She prefers to provide advice and criticism safely from the sidelines. John, on the other hand, has long taken pleasure from beating young children at Scrabble with miracle words nobody has ever heard of placed on the triple word score. Happily, Anne won - put us all to shame. My dad may have been a bit jilted after I made him remove the word "porn" from the playing board.

We don't get to see Justin again until spring break and, by then, Five will be here to add a whole new element to the family dynamic.