Promises, promises, promises.  This is what I get from my family when I ask for recent digital family photos.  My son, daughter in law and two grandchildren moved to North Carolina several years ago, and, although we exchange visits yearly, usually during the summer months when the grandchildren have vacation from school, and chat regularly, I miss not seeing them frequently.  Patrick and Grace play in the school band, he the trumpet and she the clarinet, and they often participate at special events.  Although Mom and/or Dad take photos during these events, they are not really good at sending a simple email with the images for “Grandma”. Of course, when I remind them, what do you think I get?   Promises, promises, promises.

Fortunately, my family follows up on their “promises”, that is to say, they follow up on their promises once a year.  I do indeed look forward to the very beautiful photo Christmas cards they send with pictures of the kids.  I finally get to see what they have been doing throughout the year in the presence of the photos.  It was worth waiting for them to see how attractive they look in their dress uniforms while performing in a special band event; it was worth waiting for the photos to see them clearing the colorful leaves in the yard during the fall season as well as sitting in a tree they just climbed; it was worth waiting for the photos to see them holding their pups, Nellie the poodle and Lily the maltese. I can’t wait for next year!

I love receiving photo holiday cards and love to send them, but getting that perfect picture of my children and our dog is not the easiest thing to do. First of all, getting a teenage boy to pose for a photo with his little brother without poking him or making faces or being disruptive in some sort of way is a bit challenging. Then, if you do happen to get lucky and are able to capture a moment where no one is being pinched and the dog is not licking someone’s face, is it a photo that the entire family can agree on?

Usually I like to use one beautiful photo in our family photo cards. The truth is, it’s not possible to capture the essence of a family in a single photo, and we can never all agree on one photo. So, this year, I have selected a collage photo card where I can use many photos of the family.

I used a photo of my teenager playing basketball, looking like the star athlete, one of my six year old in his Darth Vader costume, one of the dog in the snow, a vacation photo with the entire family and one that includes the boys and the dog, where the dog is licking his paw, my teenager is making a face and my six year old is smiling happily unaware of what’s going on around him.

I love the way it turned out. It gives a small glimpse into our family life and the beautiful personalities of each of us. I love looking back at our family photo cards from past years. I’ll be happy to add this one to the collection. I think it may turn out to be my favorite!

We have lots of relatives and there is sort of an agreement between us that once a year we’ll send family photos or holiday cards with our families’ pictures on them.  It’s our way of keeping up with everyone’s changes and growth.  Some of us live quite a distance away from each other so we don’t get to visit often.  We all love seeing how all the kids have grown, along with the newest addition to our extended family.  Who’s put on weight – and who’s lost it?   Do the cousins still look alike and whose hairline has receded the most?   Will our adventurous aunt and uncle’s card show some exotic spot they traveled to this year?  Family photos are great at making you feel connected.

My sister usually has a formal picture taken of her family including their pets, then adds a border and fills the entire front of their Christmas card.  I always keep it with her previous cards so you can see all the changes over the years.  My brother isn’t married yet but has two dogs.  We all convinced him that we need photo Christmas cards from him too – so he last year he used a format that had three pictures – one for each dog and one for a shot of him on his annual skiing trip.   It was a hit and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with this year.

My cousin has two daughters, both in college.  She had each of them send her a current picture from school with the only prerequisite – a big smile.  She then cropped the photos until they fit perfectly in the round “ornament” openings of a delightful design. It was one of my favorites last year.

With all of the new designs and formats available to us, we’re all getting a little more creative every year.  I love getting  cards of any type but photo Christmas cards from the family are definitely the ones I treasure the most.

I just had my first baby earlier this year, so this is the first year I’m considering photo Christmas cards.  I mean, everyone wants to see a picture of me and my charming little guy in Santa hats, right?  But my dilemma is whether to attempt the department store photo studio sitting with a 9 month old or just snap a candid shot in my living room.

I love the idea of having the great lighting and cute wintery backdrop that a professional studio would offer.  However, I have nightmares of my son spitting up all over his cute red Christmas sweater right before the session starts, or even worse, crying inconsolably while the photographer waves stuffed animals above the camera.  I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on pictures I can’t use.  There’s no guarantee I could get a great candid shot either, I suppose.   Oh, dilemmas, dilemmas!

Not sure what I’ll decide. I may give the professionals a shot and if it turns out to be the disaster I dread, at least I will have tried.  I am determined to have a cute, happy picture, so if the pro shoot is a bust, you can bet hundreds of digital shots will be taken at home to make sure I get just the right one.  Either way, I’m sure my family photo cards will be a big hit with friends and family, none of whom will realize the agonizing involved in getting that absolutely adorable holiday picture.

We did it! My 12 year old daughter and I just made our Christmas digital family photo cards…and  in August, no less. On one of the hottest days of the year we dressed up in our winter finest, turned the AC on full blast and made our very first photo Christmas cards. Last Christmas we received so many photo cards from family and friends and I could tell she felt left out thinking that the two of us didn’t qualify as a “family”. I promised her we would make our own this year but I wasn’t sure if that was an empty promise or not. So I did some research on the internet and lo and behold we accomplished what we set out to do.

To make it official, I dug out some Christmas decorations that I store in the crawl space. I couldn’t bring myself to set up the tree so I took out just the manger and some tinsel and garland and we set up the manger on the fireplace shelf. We draped some garland and sprinkled the tinsel. Then we set the timer on the camera and posed.  Our message on the inside will read: From our family to yours. My daughter had so much fun; she asked if we could leave the decorations up until Christmas. I figured, why not? She was so excited that we did this I couldn’t break her heart. Now I need to find a place to store the photo Christmas cards so come December I won’t forget where they are.

The whole process was so easy and I got to thinking…we don’t have to do this for Christmas only. Now that we are old pros – my daughter and I will make digital family photo cards for Halloween, Thanksgiving,  New Year’s, Easter…sorry I’m getting out of hand here. But you get the (digital) picture, right?

I love the idea of family photos on Christmas cards but my family at the moment consists of me and my 12 year old daughter. Each year my daughter and I love to get photo Christmas cards from our friends and my sisters and their families and I can see that she gets sad thinking we can’t do family photo Christmas cards. I guess we could enlist my sisters’ families and my parents but it wouldn’t be the same.

But really, what makes a family? In this day and age anything goes. Some families have two mommies or two daddies, some families have aunts and uncles raising their nieces and nephews while many grandparents are raising their grandchildren. And there are even families that are just made up of a man and woman who live together married or not. As I explained to my daughter there is no true definition of what a family is. To me a family is made up of the people who live together under one roof. So this year she and I will get all dolled up and we will take our “family photo” and we will send out the most beautiful family photo Christmas cards that anyone has ever seen. And we will proudly announce to the world that “We are a Family”!

I love getting photo Christmas cards every year. I especially love getting ones from our friends and family who we don’t get to see often during the year. I even keep the photo cards each year and can see how the children are growing up. I’m not going to say that I can see the adults are “growing up” too! Why can I see other families “growing up” but not my own? I guess that I don’t want to admit that my children are growing up and my husband and I are just getting old!

It’s nice to see how creative everyone can be with their holiday photo cards. We get all kinds, some traditional, some families are on their vacation, some are in front of their new house or on their new boat, some with their graduation cap and gowns on. We get some with the children wearing their sports uniforms, ballet costumes, Halloween costumes and some of my favorites include their pets. Why not? They are part of the family too aren’t they? We did get some very clever ones. We had one family including dad, mom and 2 children dressed up as sugar plum fairies all snuggled up in bed.

One year, when my children were much younger, I had them dressed up in Christmas sweaters and put reindeer antlers on them. Stella, our Chihuahua, was dressed in a little Santa Claus outfit and hat. Stella was in back of the sleigh while our children were in front pulling the sleigh. It was really cute. Well at least I thought so. My father in law didn’t think so too much. He didn’t like the idea of including our dog in the picture with his grandchildren! Like I said before, “Why not? She is part of our family”.

Every time we have a family get together someone takes pictures and those family photos are probably the most valuable memories we have.  My favorite is the photo for the family photo Christmas cards. What we do is take a picture of the entire family and my oldest sister has a photo card made. Then she sends it to all of us as her Christmas card. Sounds weird but it really is great to see the picture of all of us with our kids on the face of a card. Since these cards can be personalized she also like to add the year. This way we can keep track of the aging process!

I love that technology is so advanced that we can do all of this online; we only have to upload a photo, choose a design, add some text and voila!, within minutes a family photo Christmas card. Our family is quite large and to get everyone to cooperate at the same time is a challenge so the hardest part of all of this is getting the perfect picture. However, over the years we have learned to relax and know that it is the picture of all of us together that is more important than if we all matched.

I come from a large family – three sisters and a brother. Taking family photos throughout the years was a bit difficult. There was always someone who did not want to take the picture or wear the matching outfit.  I don’t know how my parents got all five of us to sit down long enough to take the picture!

We are all grown up now and starting our own families. It’s great that my parents took the time and effort to freeze time in a picture. These family photos tend to come out during the holidays and my parents always take the time to show their grandchildren. My parents have six grandchildren in all and each one loves looking at old family pictures during the holidays.

We have added to our parent’s collection with photo Christmas cards every year. My parents save every Christmas card and organize them by grandchild. Every year my parents take them out and display them throughout the house. Between the family photos and the Christmas photos we have tons to talk about during the holidays!

My favorite pictures are the old family photos from the early 90s. We always comment on how we looked in those pictures and we ask our parents what were they thinking when they had us dress up in those outfits!  One year we got a little silly and decided to scan in one of the pictures.  We decided it would be funny to photo shop the picture and each one of us portrayed ourselves how really were at that time of the photo.  My sister was a cheerleader so she added a megaphone and pom-poms, my brother added his football helmet and a football, my other two sisters were track stars so they added track shoes, and I added a saxophone.

We took that photo, framed it and gave it to our parents.  My parent’s reaction was priceless. It brought back so many more memories and even more great stories to share with their grandchildren.

What a delight it was when I received the photo Christmas cards my family sent me this year.  My son, daughter in law, granddaughter and grandson moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, seven years ago. Although they usually visit with me during the children’s summer vacation, they were unable to come to New Jersey during the past two years and I was not able to travel to Alaska.  My granddaughter, Grace, calls often and I frequently speak with my daughter in law, but it was a very pleasant and totally unexpected surprise to see a card feature my beautiful, happy, family in a frame that glittered with tinsel and colorful Christmas ornaments all around it.  I felt my family’s presence while holding the card and seeing them all in that lovely picture.

I decided it was now my turn to take some digital family photos and make a card.  Of course the “kids” are up to date with this technology and I get to see the family the same day the pictures are taken.  Plus, this also makes it an easy decision for the family when they wonder what they could get Grandma for Christmas.  You probably guessed it.  A digital picture frame, of course.

This year we are planning a real live Christmas visit together.  In the meantime, thanks to Christmas and digital family photos, we are always together in spirit.