Miracles to happen

I have a blog post (or 10) from our Hawaiian adventure but am a little overwhelmed with ideas. So, I'll just procrastinate for a bit longer.  One wonderful side effect if you will, of our vacation is that Lainey seems to have taken a liking to having her picture taken.  After 8 days of hounding, pleading, nagging, bribing, and all out groveling on my part, something clicked and now she's very cooperative.  As you can imagine, I am on cloud nine!  Ever the sneaky Mommy, I've been making a point of taking her picture every couple of days just to keep the idea fresh in her mind. And boy am I loving it!

This is just a sample of our little photoshoot this afternoon.  Never have I gotten such great eye contact and lovely smiles. Thank you SO much Bug! I LOVE LOVE LOVE taking pictures of you beautiful girl!

Bribery

Every once in awhile, when the light is right and the kids are agreeable, we take some photos.  It didn't take Beau long to learn that I can be easily talked into giving them Skittles or some other rare treat in exchange for his cooperation.  

He starts out all serious and focused. 

Then we hit the silly phase.

and in a matter of just a few minutes, we've hit the bored stage.  Time to shake things up.

Oh how I love this boy's genuine smile.  It warms my soul and it's what gets me out of bed in the morning. 

Somebody overheard the word candy and decided to see what she needed to do in order to feed her sweet tooth.  She can't let her little brother be the only one to get a treat. 

It's worth every piece of candy and every quarter I've handed out.  If they only knew how priceless they and these photos are to me, their piggy banks would be full and their teeth rotted.