Christmas “Cheese”

Over the weekend, Sam and I took Ella and AJ to get Christmas pictures done. We scheduled them a few weeks ago. We had a few different outfits that we wanted to get their pictures in, but we weren’t able to do more than one. We went back and forth as to whether or not we wanted to take them in their PJ’s or the dress outfits. We opted for the dress outfits and they came out great. So why only one outfit?

There was some sort of water main break at the mall and they closed the mall for a couple days. So they rescheduled people’s appointments for the weekend. In essence, they were double/triple booked. Our appointment was at 11:30am, which should have been the second appointment of the day. There were two families in there when we arrived for our appointment. The lady that was there was obviously already frazzled. She stated that her help had not arrived yet.

She had finished the first set of photos and the parents of the first child were in front of a computer clicking their favorites as she took the next family back. That second family had like 4 kids and they were doing family pictures as well as individual pictures. We were basically told that it would be a bit before we got called back and that we could walk the store, which we did.

It was not easy keeping Ella and AJ happy, though. We were close to lunch time and nap time, so the longer we waited, the more cranky they could become. It was closer to 12:45p by the time we got to go back. The entire time we waited, Sam and I were getting ticked. We thought for sure that because they were so overbooked, we’d be rushed in and rushed out. Thankfully that did not happen, and we got some really nice shots.

Kudos to my wife for this idea. You wouldn’t know that Ella would not really stand still for pictures. She was running all over the place. We love the one above because it looks like she is pointing at AJ.

The photographer asked her to give her brother a kiss, which she did. What makes me laugh is that he is still in the “return to Santa” box, which almost makes it like she is kissing him goodbye.

We got a couple of each of them alone, too, which came out nice.

Next up, pictures with Santa. Cabela’s has contact free photos and we’ve made our appointment. Hopefully, those will go well.