Fall Time Photos

So before it snowed (and it has snowed here, a lot!), I wanted to try and take some portraits of my boys. Not an easy task when whenever the camera comes out they run and hide. Literally - they actually run and actually hide. But I have been reading some photography books lately and they are full of wonderful suggestions on how to make your kids forget you are holding a camera. Well, none of the ideas worked. Not really anyway. I thought that if I took them to the park and played with them they would be having so much fun that I could get some pictures of them at least smiling. What I got was a whole bunch of pictures like this:

Moses wouldn't even look up while on the teeter-totter for fear I might actually take his picture! Jokes on him because I took it anyway! In the end I did end up with a few of Moses and one of Kael actually looking at the camera.

And I actually managed to get one of each of them smiling. 

And of course the 2 I liked the best came out blurry.

 

This photography stuff is harder than it looks. I would appreciate any tips at all on how to get photo-phobic children to relax. Because playing with them and talking to them and trying oh so hard to distract them doesn't seem to be enough. At least we got to play at the park one last time before winter set in for good.