You know that it's the end of July/beginning of August in our neck of the woods when every one's facebooks feeds are filled with pictures of Buttonwood Farm. Buttonwood Farm started as a Dairy farm, but has grown over the years. Last fall we met up with some of my high school friends & their kids for pumpkin picking, corn maze adventures, a fantastic hayride, & other fun. In the summer, everyone comes for the sunflowers (& the ice cream). Ten years ago, Buttonwood planted an acre of sunflowers & noticed that people were coming from all around to photograph them. The next year they planted 10 acres, sold the sunflowers, & donated the proceeds to the Make a Wish Foundation.
People truly do come from all around. Like I said, facebook feeds have been full of sunflower photos. I've wanted to go see the sunflowers for years, but we were never able to fit it in to our schedules (or I would forget about it until the sunflowers were gone). This year I was determined. We had approximately 2 hours of free time on a Sunday morning, & we were going to fit in sunflowers. Not only that, we were going to take amazing family photos...maybe photos that we could use for this years Christmas cards.
There was just one problem. I'm serious about there only being a two hour window of time for us. Sunflower week happened upon one of our busiest weeks of our summer. Daddy & I were exhausted from a full week of work & full day of Newport Folk Festival fun the day before. You were exhausted from double-sleepover-mania. I didn't care. We were going to take amazing photos if it killed us.
I haven't quite decided if we will use our Buttonwood Farm photos for our Christmas cards, but thought I would share some of the outtakes just so you can see how wicked fun Buttonwood was for us that day...
This is how the photoshoot started. I was just happy that we're all dressed, color coordinated, & surrounded by pretty sunflowers. You & Daddy? Not so much. Can you two look any angrier about having to take family photos?!
Then there were these two gems. You smiled so adorably in the first, but I'm pretty sure Daddy is contemplating how he can go out for milk & never come home. In the second, I'm going to call that your I-Hate-Everything-About-This-Face.
At this point I may have started to get a little frantic. My voice may have risen past normal levels high-pitched crazed levels. "Why are you two making this so hard?! If you want ice cream, I better see some smiles from my family! Do you want to have to do this again?! Let's pull it together," I screeched. A smiling man in front of me turned around to see where the screeching was coming from, & nervously met my crazed eyes. "Um, I'll smile for ice cream," he said gently like you would talk to an unstable person. I'm pretty sure he was thanking God he wasn't part of our family. I'm pretty sure you & Daddy were wishing you could be apart of anyone else's family.
We took a break. You went for a ride on the cow train. Daddy bought some sunflowers to take home. Then we tried again.
What do you think? Perfect family Christmas photo?! Maybe we should just forget real family portraits & use your family drawing instead?
I love you so,
Mommy
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