When I started taking a picture a day last January I didn’t plan for this. I didn’t plan to have to fight my way from day to day, I didn’t mean for the brightly colored pictures to be such a stark opposite from the darkness that slowly overwhelmed me. I didn’t know that the effort that it would take to take a simple snapshot of my life each day would become too difficult a task for me to complete. I never could have foreseen the shadow that would start to dull my vision, that would make my days turn dark. I wanted so much to try to keep going, I gave my all to being there, present in that colored world I could see through the lens of my camera, but I started to drift, I floated away. The need to take a picture at some point through out the day, became overpowered by the need to simply make it through the day. So the days came, they came and they came and I held as tight as I could to the ground.

As I reach the end of the year, I look back at the 111 photos a day I did manage to take, and I feel a bit sad. Sad for those 254 days, sad that I don’t have the pictures to represent them, sad that so much of my time was spent in that shadowy cold place. But seeing them all laid out like this, it now seems fitting. Those days aren’t days that I will be able to account for, a huge portion of 2009 just happened while I tried desperately to keep my self above ground. There is this dark quiet time in my life, and in the end my “365” photos are a fitting representation of my entire year. Because even though I did survive, even though I did prevail – I am alive, those empty photo spots are an honest accounting for where I’ve been, they are true to what I’ve endured, and they represent something that deserves to be recognized. Next year, I will try again, I will start fresh, I’ll keep holding on, treading forward, living the best that I can. But for 2009, it does seem right to bear witness to my 254 days of gray.

I thought it would be fun to gather as many Christmas pictures as I could find, check out how the boys have grown!

Here’s Gareth’s first Christmas, and our first Christmas as a family in 2000:

and for the life of me I cannot find our second Christmas, but here is the next year.  I remember this year too, it was the first year Gareth was really able to enjoy the tree, and the lights, and the presents!  We had way too much fun shopping for him in 2002:

Heres the first one I could find, we just had Gareth and Owen in 2003:

Reecey’s first Christmas in 2004:

Our new Pj’s in front of the tree tradition started here in 2005:

Here are the three of them growing in 2006 (I can’t get over Owen’s adorable expression in this one!!!  He was like the universes most adorable preschooler, seriously!)

2007, I was super extra pregnant with Tennyson at this point:

and I apparently forgot to take the official picture last year in 2008:

and then we have this year my four super amazing little boys:

Wow! that is nearly a full decade of photos, Its hard to believe I’ve been doing the mom thing for so long!!  Isn’t it fun to see how much they’ve all grown???

Well Christmas has come and gone here at the Clingerman house, and it was a real treat this year.  I swear every year just progressively gets more exiting with the boys as they countdown eagerly to Christmas eve, and then get up astonished to see our little living room literally brimming full of presents on Christmas day!

This year I think the holidays had a extra special meaning I’ve really had to fight to actually make it to this Christmas season.  To be here, to have made it through this past year makes all the holiday festivities feel more significant than ever before. 

I also felt more motivated than I have in quite some time to do all the “Christmasy” type things I enjoy.  Making our Christmas card, crafting some special gifts, and even sending out a few gifts and packages in the mail! (albeit a little late…). ALSO this year for the first time the boys and I actually made cookies!!!  Four kinds, all in one night LOL, it was exciting (and exhausting LOL!)

For me, hand making some special crafts always makes me feel like it really is Christmas time!  And although the past few years doing the bare minimum of that seemed like a feat (little kids can really cramp your crafting style!), this year it was able to make gifts by hand for each of the boys teachers, I got to craft some hand made ornaments for a handful of friends, and I even gave out several handmade gifts!  I really am quite proud of all I accomplished (even just wrapping for four boys is quite the job!) 

Here is the one pic I took of some ornaments I crafted:

The one thing I did NOT accomplish though is taking lots of pictures!  It isn’t that I didn’t think of it, it is just that… well this season I was sort of just caught up in the actual celebrating of the season… and I just couldn’t help but feel like if I was trying to get that “picture perfect” moment on film, that it all might just be a bit less genuine or something… I don’t know, it was just my random thought for this particular year, and I think it was sorta kinda nice to be able to be in the moment and not behind the camera all the time!

Christmas eve I couldn’t help but feel so blessed when we saw our gifts all spread out around the tree.  Every year I’m overwhelmed with the sheer number of gifts we end up with, and this year was no exception.  We are not one of those families that buys new stuff all the time, so Christmas morning is like an extraordinary shock to our systems when we have one day filled with big giant piles of new stuff!  Also, as our family has grown, I’m always just in awe of how warm and cozy our little house feels, as we are all together as a family.  My life is rich with blessings, even in this year filled with real struggles.

And here is this year’s Christmas photo of the bestest Christmas gifts a mom could ever ask for!

Well, Merry Christmas Everyone, hope your holidays were/are extra special this year too!

So, first and foremost, I guess I should officially retract the not so glowing post from about this time last year when I wanted to get the boys picture taken together for a Christmas card shot… I was pretty certain after that whole fiasco that they would never let me take their picture together with out… duct tape…

But this year, I don’t know what happened!  Maybe the spirit of Christmas came right down upon their little souls and a peace filled their hearts…  maybe after having one more year of getting older and wiser (and man oh man was this year a doozy) they are practically old souls more than happy to sit and say “cheese” while pondering the mysteries of the universe… maybe they have just started feeling progressively more sorry for me and it was actually a pity pose (I’ll take a pity pose! seriously!)… maybe it was daddy’s little pre-photoshoot pep talk, complete with smile practicing in front of the mirror…  …

…or maybe, I’m just one lucky mommy…  Whatever it was, this little family photo session in our play room, went very very very right.  I hung up a sheet on the wall, put the camera up on a tripod and arranged the family in picture perfect position – then I did the set the timer and run to my spot – routine.  My expectations were not high…. seriously…

But OH MY GOSH, when it was all said and done I only had to take 5 family pictures before I had a near perfect shot, and even Tennyson sat right down on my lap and said “cheese” with a huge grin.  I was in awe of my boys! Even after that the boys sat and posed for pictures of daddy and them, mom and the boys, and then some really adorable brothers poses too!  I was so pleased I was practically giddy!

I posted a ton of them on my facebook, but here are a few highlights just for the bloggy:

I’m saving the “perfect” family one for my the christmas card, but seriously this is even better than I would have hoped for with 4 boys!!

and I just adore this one of my 5 guys!

This is the best picture I’ve gotten of the boys and I too:

I didn’t even have to set this one up!  They just did it!!! heee!

  And here is Reecey and his number one fan! Tennyson has been following him around like a puppy lately!

and last but definitely not least, here’s my all time favorite picture ever:

Just looking at these again I’m seriously in awe!  YAY!  It was so nice to have a good photo shoot!