BEST. PICTURE. EVER!

SERIOUSLY.

this was taken by the fine folks at Picture People in the mall in Manchester, NH.
Our photographer was a slightly alternative young gentleman who was named, I believe, Brian.
We spent nearly an hour taking photos with the young fella, and made him laugh at our wacky antics.

The deal with Picture People is that they print their choices of the best photos from your shoot, and then let you decide based upon the prints. One photo in particular, they printed simply because it was so awful. We loved it. During our lengthy selection and check-out process, during which we bought something like 8 poses in different print combinations between 5 credit cards, I convinced Brian to throw in the super-awful-good photo, since they were just going to throw it out anyway. My brother Marc took it home and scanned it, and has now shared it with the family. And I will now share it with the world.

Behold, the worst family portrait ever!



In case you don't know my whole fam-damn-ily, here's the roster, left to right.
Me (Jess), (child #1), in blue shirt, constipated expression, and bizarre sunburn
Deirdre (D'Marie), (Child #4), in white shirt and flash reflected off glasses
Marc-Daniel, (Child #3), t-shirt, bit-into-a-lemon face with eyes closed
Bethany (Bebe or BMac), (Child #6), laughing with eyes closed
Colleen (Leen or Neen), (Child #5), fuschia shirt, laughing with eyes closed
Front row: Dad (John), with glare off glasses & Mom (Alicia) smiling.

To recap, 7 of the eight members of my immediate family, with my brother John-Damien conspicously absent, photographed for posterity with only one (maybe two) even close to looking good - Mom (and maybe Dad, if you ignore the flash reflection).

We don't know what we were laughing at. We laughed so many times, it could have been any number of jokes - including fat baby and anorexic baby.

Seriously.
BEST. PICTURE. EVER.
If we could use for a Christmas card, I think we would.
(And, if wanted to show the whole family, I think we could photoshop JD in behind me, next to D. I'm sure we could find a suitably unflattering photo of him).

P.S. Oh, and don't worry, we have plenty of other good shots from the photo session. If you are a family member who wants to see the online album, email me and I'll send you link).

P.P.S. If you look close enough, you can see both D's and Colleen's engagement rings on their left hands.

P.P.P.S. For those of you keeping track at home, before I became the redhead I was meant to be, my hair color was closest to that of Bethany.