Yet another Christmas tradition…

Back in 1996 when Holly was two, we both put on our warmest coats and popped down to the photo booth in Woolies to have our picture taken.

Holly was wearing the crown that she’d made that day at nursery school and I had a Santa hat stuffed in my pocket. We were going to take a special picture, a picture of us both dressed in our Christmas headgear as a Christmas gift for Gaynor. I pulled on my hat, and…well, I never could resist pulling a funny face.

Gaynor loved the small framed photograph and ever since then Holly and I have continued to put on silly hats and faces and squeeze into what seem to be ever smaller photo booths. Pulling our hats from our pockets we pull the curtain and swivel the round stool into position. Five, four, three, two, one - FLASH! Then we wait for the thin strip of photographs to pop out of the slot in the side of the booth. Why does it seem to take so long?

It hasn’t always been easy. Finding a frame small enough is always a challenge, and as the years have gone on it’s become a real struggle to fit both of us into a booth - then of course there’s that ‘what if I see one of my friends’ thing to worry about as Holly has got older and finding headwear that she’s prepared to even consider wearing gets increasing hard.

We’ve worn all sorts of hats – paper, Santa, elf, reindeer antlers, tinsel - I’ve even worn a fireman’s helmet and a pirates hat. I look a complete idiot in most of the photographs, no who am I kidding – I look a complete idiot in ALL fourteen.

Fourteen. Can it it really be fourteen?

I look an idiot and Holly, on the other hand, has always managed to look beautiful - regardless of headwear.

This year we decided to give up the booth, well it really was getting a squeeze, and Holly has very bony knees and elbows. So this year we took the picture ourselves using the timer on my camera, then printing it out on the printer.

Just look at us wearing our Christmas headbands. Do I look silly? Well, I still can’t resist pulling a funny face – as if I had any other.