Love and Lunch Money: What a trip to Starbucks can accomplish...... Posted by Carol

So I am a bad mother.....I bribe my kids. Yes I do..... I admit it. I don't always bribe my kids, but some situations call for a bribe. You can call it positive reinforcement if it makes you feel better. But we all know what it really is.............

My partner K and I wanted to have pictures taken of our family. Our oldest is graduating high school this year, and (hopefully please dear God), moving out to start he next phase of her life. We wanted a snapshot of where our family is now. So we hired a FABULOUS (yes I know it's caps...she is THAT good) local photographer Leila Wylie (commercial: http://www.leilawyliephotography.com) to do our photos.

There are 6 of us in our family. Do you know how hard that is for all of us to be looking the same way, not blinking, etc at the same time? Well, it is pretty darn near impossible. We spent two hours walking around Old Towne Portsmouth (Virginia) with Leila snapping away, and she ended up with 61 beautiful shots. I want to share some of them with you here.


Black and white of our oldest, K

16 year old B in a tree

Those are the oldest two kids. K is a senior, so she will be leaving the family nest this year. B is a sophomore, just turned 16, and learning how to drive (God help us).

then there is our too cool for himself (and everyone else) 14 year old (in a month) Z.

The baby of the family (please don't tell him I said that) is sweet J. Precocious, smart as a whip, still loves his mamas.

There were some very nice photos that I will share with you. Seriously, these kids could model......


B looking very handsome

Z chillin' (see I told you he is cool)

Sweet J

Pretty K

So the kids (and us) tromped around for two hours. During our travels we came upon this weird old pipe thing. It was in a lot where there had been a building that had obviously burned down. This pipe thing was just there out in the open by itself. (if you can tell me what it is you score BIG points). Anyway, Z leans on it and strikes a James Dean pose (I know he doesn't know who James Dean is, but that is what it looks like to me). If you don't know who James Dean is, google it. :-)


Cool huh?....Z

So anyway, back to the bribe. After about one and a half hours they just couldn't take it anymore. They refused to smile. They had pained looks on their faces. All except sweet J. He smiled every time. So we turned to bribery. We tried threats first. We said "if you look crappy, we are going to post them on Facebook and tag you." They shrugged. We begged, "please just smile, look nice, do your best, we are almost done." They rolled their eyes.


My K and I

So we said, "If you just do your best for the next 20 minutes we will take you to Starbucks and buy you whatever you want to drink." We must have looked pathetic, and they were probably thirsty, because they became very cooperative.