boys on a red bench

This week's theme at iheartfaces is Red. For Valentine's and also for the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women Campaign.

This is a picture I took this summer while in Regina visiting family before our move down to Bogota. I was bound and determined to get a few good pictures of my three boys and my sister's two... and it didn't happen until the day before we left. I threw together five outfits of mismatched stripes and plaids and dragged the five of them around my sister's neighbourhood until the whining got to be more than I could bare I got the shots I was looking for.

Now while I pride myself on having gotten some great shots of kiddos not-my-own in the past, this was quite the challenge. Not only were they, after years of my picture-taking, no longer impressed/awed by the lady-with-the-big-black-camera, but my threats and cajoling had little effect on them and their levels of cooperation. Add to that the fact that one of them was sick with a cold that had him coughing mouth wide open in 80% of the images, but another (Simon) was starting to spike a fever and feeling generally miserable (a trip to an emergency clinic that night lead to a strep throat diagnosis, poor guy).

Not to mention that never have you met a group of five sillier boys.

This bench is about two blocks from my sister's house, along a street in the much neglected "Chinatown" area of the city. Driving passed it several times during our three weeks there, I knew it would be a fun place to drag take the boys for pictures. There is actually a whole series of these -some of which are hilarious- that I'll try to get around to posting sometime this week.

More great pics, as always, over at iheartfaces.

Here are the rest, if you're curious or want a laugh.