Why are family pictures so draining?

Why are family pictures SO draining? It takes half the day to get ready for them, especially with 4 girls in the house! Okay, so Presley wasn't that hard, but the other three take a while. This year I was trying to support a girl in my ward (she shall remain nameless) in her efforts to start a new photography business. "NEW" being the key word here. The night before our session, she called me to ask what colors we were wearing etc and said that she'd have the white background ready. Little did I know, that meant she was going to paint the wall in her basement (which had previously been black ) white...along with the floor. One coat that night and one at 6:00 am she thought would be fine and dry by the time we got there. Well, they weren't! But, she had borrowed some sheets from a neighbor to lay on the floor. Of course Landon was hateful-do you remember trying to get an almost two year old to sit still for pictures for 5 minutes!? She really wanted the girls to wear Santa hats for the picture (I vetoed that idea)-and she also had some other props she was anxious to try out. Trying to be as polite as possible, I declined, and tried to keep things as simple as possible. About forty minutes and some white paint on Landon's shirt later, we were finished. I do have to say though, I was pleased when she brought them by today to preview. Not the highest quality, but she captured the moment and that's really what I was looking for. I got the proofs, did a little work on photoshop, swapping heads and tweaking color, and am overall pleased with what we ended up with. So, here are a few of our family pictures 2007. Enjoy!