Friday, November 2, 2007

I'm glad Christmas only comes once a year!

We've just been through a very difficult afternoon and evening. The kids are traumatized, maybe never to recover. Me and the Mighty Mrs. J are exhausted. It's something I hope we never have to go through again. But, I'm sure we'll do it again, and again, and again.

What was this tragic situation we found ourselves in? Family pictures. Oh, the horror! The school group we're part of held a fund raiser where the school got a portion of the money from each family portrait. It seemed like the other families I saw were just sitting, posing nicely for the photographer. But not my kids.

My kids? Little McGyver thinks it's funny to make goofy faces just as the photographer takes the picture. Disney Girl gets disgusted with the whole process, and refuses to face the camera at all.

Meanwhile, my wife and I resort to threats and bribery, just in an effort to get a couple of decent pictures. "Just wait until I get you outside!" "Turn around, and you'll get candy when this over!" Of course, nothing really works once the meltdown begins. We just encouraged the photographer to take the best pictures he could. The Mighty Mrs. J picked the best out of the bad bunch.

The only one who enjoyed the whole thing was Toddler Houdini. She loves pictures. She loves to smile. If she could just rub off on the other 2.

I don't think I could do it more than once a year. I've got to rest up for next Christmas' pics!















These are 3 Musketeers doing trick or treating at the zoo. Apparently, they'll only smile for pics if mom and dad aren't paying someone good money to take them...

3 comments:

Michelle said...

Your kids are WAAAAY TOOOO CUTE! More photos!

Richard J said...

Thanks, Michelle. We think they're kind of cute too. If you look back through the blog, you'll see all kinds of pics of the kids. I post them all the time.

It's one reason I figured I could post once a day for a month. At least 20 days will just be kid pics...

Cap said...

This post reminds me of the Everybody Loves Raymond where he tried to get his mother a family portrait for Christmas. Did you see that one?
His mother, as she often did, found a way to annoy his wife beforehand, so his wife brought her parents, who his mother hated, to the session. Then his mother refused to be in the picture and he had to drag her chair over to where they were all standing.
It was a classic!