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Showing posts from December 21, 2014

The annual family holiday portrait: bloody nose edition

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A version of this column first appeared in The Dallas Morning News and on DallasNews.com. Please check out the site . ------------ As we drove toward the oversize closet in the department store, fancifully called a portrait studio, my wife and I briefed our three sons. No fighting, we said. No goofy faces. And no horseplay, a word that has been ready to roll in my frontal lobe since having multiple kids. Given enough reminders, and sometimes bribes, the boys usually behave well. But the window of opportunity is small for the annual family photo, which goes in an album and gets sent out with Christmas cards. (Just so you know, we don’t include one of those obnoxious holiday brag letters. I think the photo clearly shows that my kids have genius IQs and are working on a cure for cancer.) My wife and I were part of annual family portraits growing up, and we’ve continued the tradition despite living in the photo-saturated digital age. It’s nice to have one family portrait that