Top 11 of 11

As I'm sure was the case for any of you reading, picking the top 11 for the entire year was so, so difficult. Part of the difficulty is the fact that I'm finishing up a Project 365, so I have over 17000 photos to whittle down to 11 of the best. Granted, some of them could be eliminated right away, but it was still tough.

In the end, I had 22 'finalists'. I really just loved all of these finalists; some because I love the expressions and some because I love that the photo is technically pretty good. So, the 11 that I chose to include here are an attempt to balance the choices in terms of how many times each of my three kids appear in the photos, and from there, how many 'solo' photos of each are included. It's still not balanced, but so be it. Ironically, in my Project 365, all three kids appear the same number of times within 10 photos, which isn't bad for random shots taken over the course of a year.

So, here we go; these are in chronological order...

This one just makes me giggle. How could I not include it?

I love this one of my daughter. She looks so bright-eyed and fresh faced. The funny thing is, it was just a random shot as we sat on a tram back to our car at an amusement park.  This was not one of the pictures in my Project 365 as a photo of my kids and husband on the roller coaster won out.

Love his expression, love the gesture, just love this photo.  You have to know that my older son is the most serious and 'sincere' of my three kids, and I think this photo captures that part of his personality perfectly.

 We went to the zoo for Mother's Day, and we got to try hula hoops.  I love her carefree, having fun expression.  This was not in my Project 365, but a group shot of the two of us hula hooping together was.

 We have this one hanging as a 12" x 16" canvas in our family room (cropped down).  It was also one of the three photos included in our Christmas card this year. 

This one typifies my younger son's personality.  Smiley and happy-go-lucky a majority of the time.  He also is a big Thomas fan right now, so I like that he's wearing the Thomas overalls.

I adore this photo, despite its technical imperfections.  This one is not in my Project 365, as later this day we went to see my nephew play baseball and I included one of him instead.  I really didn't like days where I had to choose between a photo I really liked and one that better represented what we did that day or included someone who wasn't always around.

This is a good memory of our summer vacation.  We visited a swamp and we all got to hold the baby alligator.   His expression is priceless.  I also like my daughter's uncertainty in the background.

This was also from our summer vacation.  My son was enchanted by these parakeets.  He loved seeing them, and having them land on his arm.

Love the lighting on this, and the almost complete blackness. My son loved this Halloween costume, and the nice thing is, it's really PJs, so he can continue to wear it.

I like this action shot, especially since all three kids adore this tire swing in our backyard.

So there you go...some of my favorites from 2011.