So like every good mommy I wanted to provide my son with a Norman Rockwell Christmas. For some reason I thought that since I am a stay at home mom now that I would be able to pull this off. I thought that somehow I would miraculously be transformed into a wonderful housekeeper and patient loving wife and mother. You know like good old June Cleaver. Well part of my plan for the perfect Christmas was to send out perfect Christmas Cards. I decided I needed to get Griff's 18 month pictures done so I might as well get family pictures done that could be turned in to a wonderful Christmas card so that we could share our perfect joy with our friends and family.
We have always gone the JCPenney's to get our pictures done and they have always done a good job. They usually take a lot of time to get the little man comfortable enough to smile and when Eric starts smiling Griffen isn't too far behind. Now that I have become somewhat of a tech geek ( not really in fact you are looking at this weird background because I wanted something different but I was too lazy to really figure it out.) I decided that I would book our portrait experience online, that way I could make sure that no one was scheduled before or after us so they would spend as much time as we needed to get our inner model groove out. Eric scheduled the day off and we were ready to have the perfect day. We were going to get our pictures,go shopping and finish all of our shopping list, go to lunch, after a nap, decorate the tree,then I would make a perfect meal and then follow it off by going to see all the lights around town , then we would all come home have hot cocoa and drift off into blissful slumber.
What really happened is I got the stomach flu on Wednesday and had it till Friday (picture day) Griffen started getting sick on Thursday, followed by Eric Friday morning. I for some brilliant reason believed it would be OK to continue on with our days events as long Eric and I took Imodium AD and Griffen seemed OK. (Onward and upward you know.) We went to JcPenney to start our portrait experience by being greeted by a room full of screaming kids. The room to recreate the true experience of Hell was heated appropriately. Families in perfect red,black and white plaid outfits were squeezed into every inch of the room. They were playing a movie for the kids at a volume level that could deafen the dead. Underneath that was cheery Christmas classic being played on their stereo. Peace on Earth my butt! So after waiting an hour which was spent chasing Griffen away from the breakable Christmas displays that surrounded the store. We finally got our chance to go in the room and make it work. The photographer snapped a couple a pictures after shake Elmo in our faces told us we were done and kicked us to the waiting room to wait another hour to pick our favorites and pay the bill.( I felt a little like the kid in the The Christmas Story when Santa kicked down the big slide before he could tell him he wanted a red rider bee bee gun) Little G and Big E were done so I sent them to a playground in the mall. Which they lasted 5 minutes at before Little G called it quits. Eric took him to the car and drove him around the parking lot for the rest of the time. Meanwhile I sat and listened to other perfect mommies hemming and hawing about what they wanted to get. Finally my turn came. I told the dude listen I don't want any of your enhanced photos( over priced, over designed photoshop pieces of crap) The dude insisted on showing me us in sepia, in black and white, with elves, with bows, with holly with snowflakes and messages of Christmas cheer. ( If he had photoshopped a gun in my hand and a skull and crossbones he would have been closer to a sell) So after looking through all the pictures where my double chin is accentuated and Griffen expression is something along the lines of " Lady if you shake Elmo at me one more time I shoving him where the sun don't shine." I picked what I wanted. The Dude continued to sell me and told me if I would buy this much more I would get this much free stuff and like any prisoner of war I said "whatever". So now we have $100 worth of crappy pictures to remember our "Perfect" day. And I suppose my inner model did find her groove when I came home I ate lunch and threw it up :) That damn June Cleaver I hope she rots in her TV grave. And Norman Rockwell can bite me.
