Champion of My Heart New Avatar Photo and Outtakes

It took four years and innumerable tries before we FINALLY got a new avatar photo of me and Lilly. I cannot tell you how many attempts to replace our favorite photo from December 2007 resulted in me sobbing. I’m not the most photogenic person, and I take bad photos personally. Here, then, is our new favorite picture … along with a few outtakes … because I really did NOT want to be that girl who uses a terribly outdated photo online.

We’ll try to get a new one next year too, but if we fail, be prepared to see this one for a while … even with:

• A few more gray hairs
• A few more crinkles around the eyes
• A few more pounds, making me cheekier

Roxanne & Lilly, Circa December 2007

Roxanne and Lilly, Circa November 2011

Since Lilly tends to clam up and look worried, when you point a camera at her, we did play some fetch first so that she would smile.

It also helped that:

• I’d just gotten my hair cut.
• It was overcast, which meant less squinting on my part.
• I put on much more makeup than usual.
• We used Tom’s Nikon CoolPix S6100, which takes better photos and has a much faster shutter speed than my Canon PowerShot A1000.

Here are a few of the outtakes.

My eternal gratitude to Tom for humoring me with photo shoots day after day, until I was happy. Nothing like a decent photo to boost a sagging girl’s mood.