Picture Day

Today we were scheduled to have pictures taken at JCPenney. This is where we've had Nate's Christmas pictures taken the last two years, and both times they have turned out great, even if the experience itself was bad. This year, in addition to Nate's Christmas pics, we also wanted a family picture. So last night I got all of our clothes ready and even made a late-night trip to walmart for a firetruck because I thought it would be cute in the pictures of him in his Christmas pajamas.

This morning, after convincing Blake to shave and wear pants that actually matched his tie :) I got myself and Nate fancied up and headed for our 10:40 appointment, running a little late. I ended up practically running through JCPenney with Nate on my hip and also carrying the walker and a big bag. But they were running on time and got us right in, so all was well.

I could tell that Michael, our photographer, was new because another woman was telling him what backgrounds to choose and was kind of reprimanding him for taking too long. He only took one shot of each of the poses. Three different poses of us as a family, only three pictures. Same with Nate--set up a shot of him on a couch, playing with his fire truck, or with fake cookies and milk ... one shot each. I didn't see him smiling except once. When he did smile, Michael waited 10 seconds and THEN took the picture ... when he was no longer smiling. I was nervous, but this has happened before and I was really surprised that we got great pictures.

While we were waiting for them to get our pictures on the computer to view, we went to the food court to eat lunch. Nate was still in his Christmas pajamas, so he looked like a little Hugh Heffner riding in his stroller through the mall. :) We ate, Blake went back to work, and Nate and I went back to view the pictures. By then, it was Nate's naptime. I couldn't look at the pictures because he was crying and whining and in much need of a nap. I told the woman I'd come back in 15 minutes, and I strolled Nate around JCPenney 20 times hoping he'd go to sleep. Nope. But when we went back to the photo studio, he was in a better mood and was playing nicely in the floor.

But then I had to wait about 20 minutes for the woman to show me the pictures because she was dealing with an emergency. After taking our pictures, Michael the photographer had taken pictures of another family--parents, four-year-old boy, and one-year-old triplets! Somehow he had not used a memory card in the camera for that shoot, and now there were no pictures on the computer at all! Can you imagine getting all those kids ready and out to the mall, then wrestling them all into sitting still for pictures, and then for someone to tell you they had made a mistake and they had to do it all over again? Well, I wasn't there when they told him, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty.

Okay, finally the woman comes over to show me the pictures. I was looking through them to see which ones would work for the Christmas card, and I was having trouble finding one that looked right ... when I realized there wasn't a single good picture in the whole bunch. Not one. Nate wasn't smiling in many of them. There was one family picture where all of us looked decent, but he had arranged us in a really awkward way where Blake was like four feet above me and Nate. There was no way I was spending money on bad pictures of us, so as bad as I hated to after all that, I told her I didn't like the pictures and didn't want any of them. As I was leaving the mall, I called Blake to tell him what happened and somehow missed my road and got lost and drove all over Louisville.

So four hours after we left, we returned home very tired and cranky and with nothing to show for our day. Nate took a nice long nap. And when he woke up, it was snowing! Just little flurries at first, but now it's a decent snow. I bundled us up and took him out, and you should have seen his face. He was in awe of the snow. And of course my camera battery is dead, so the day was a wash when it came to pics, but at least it has started looking up a bit.