a photo post with no pictures

a while ago my mom dropped off this purple courderpy jumper with matching puffed-sleeve reverse-button up top for emma. it had been mine 30 years ago & it cute is a super 1980s kind of way. my brilliant plant for christmas was to get a sears portrait taken of em in the outfit & pair it with a 30yr old sears portrait my mom had done of me in the same outfit. cute idea, right? so we dress up the kids & haul them off to sears after speech today & then spent the next 4 hours in sears photo hell.
usually we do our family photos with the photographer who shot our wedding. she only works in black & white, she doesn't use props etc, & just lets everyone play & move & shoots journalistic-style. i love it, it's very natural & totally un-posed, & also totally not what i needed for this christmas project, hence our first (& only!) venture to sears.
maybe your sears is better, but ours was sucked royally. apparently you need an appointment, they don't use real photographers, (at one point, N had to stop & show our "photographer" how to work her camera so we could finish the shoot.), & have no concept of things like time. we managed to get what we needed, but only after 1 hour of waiting for some one to make us an appointment, 2 hours of wandering the mall, 30 minutes of watching her struggle with a digital camera, & another 30 minutes of waiting for her to "process" our photos.
(did i mention that by the time we got the pictures done, emma had cut her lip, conrad had candy cane in his hair & val had a mysterious bruise appear on his forehead? yeah.... at least the photos will look realistic. we also let emma wear her skull print leggings in the photos. it just wouldn't have been "emma" without them.)
on the plus side, while we were in sears photo limbo, we stopped to see santa & the kids got to spend a half hour running around santa's village like they owned the place. (santa loved cops & his wife loved kids, so we were golden.) & we got a really cute picture of all 3 on santa's lap & all 3 smiling! (if you have more than one child, then you know what an achievement this is!)
everyone missed nap & i deserted daddy with the super cranky hoard as soon as we got done to go take a much overdue glucose test. usually drinking a cup full of horrible glucola & sitting still for an hour by myself is torture. today it was like a gift from the gods.