Photo Shoot at Sears

I like to take pictures of my kids. And I love candid professional pictures that are taken in natural environments. If I had the right camera, and photography skills, my house would be plastered in my own photography. And although I am known to be quite frugal, on ocassion, I do get "professional" pictures taken for certain milestones (using coupons of course!). And with two children, in matching outfits that were about to be too small, I decided to get their annual sibling pictures taken now. I had two coupons, so booked two different appointments for the week. One for the two kids, and one for Emma's 2-year pictures.

I had been prepping Emma all day to do "good listening" and having her practice "smile for the lady". You can imagine our surprise when the photographer turned out to be a man. "Where is the lady? I don't want the man." And so, with me kneeling down next to her, just outside camera range, we were able to convince her to smile for the man. At one point she reached up for me and asked me to give her a big hug. I told her I would after she smiled for the camera. Mean mommy.

And mommy got a little meaner when the "professional" photographer told me to put Levi in Emma's lap, expecting her to support his fragile little head all by her two-year-old self! When I explained this wouldn't work as she was nearly dropping him on the floor, he suggested I place Levi on her back. That didn't work so well either.

So mommy finally spoke up and asked mr. professional photographer for a seat for the little guy.

Levi still wasn't impressed. Neither was I.


But in the end, this snobby mommy was happy with what I got for $13!! Thank you Sears! (pictures are just samples, courtesy of Sears, who hopefully, is allowing me to post these on my blog!).

Now, the big debut was only two days later....
Emma's TWO-YEAR-OLD photo shoot!
This time, the photographer was a lady, Emma was thrilled.
She RAN in the room, jumped on the set, and struck a pose all on her own! In fact, it was hard to get her to sit still. She did amazing!!!





I really like the pictures for what they are, but the time they spend trying to convince me to buy hundreds of dollars worth of pictures from them is really annoying to me. So much that I don't really want to go back. I had to explain several times to the lady that although I love all the pictures, I don't want 30 different pictures of her in the same dress at the same age, and no, I don't have 30 different people who want these pictures either. After about 20 minutes of convincing her I only wanted the one picture, and my children beginning to have meltdowns in the stroller, I finally stood up, said "this is the only one I want" and pushed my screaming children to the register, hoping she would follow me so I could pay and hightail it outta there!

...and yet, I will probably go back for Levi's 3 month pictures because I can't resist a good deal! Even if it means putting up with annoying salespeople....perhaps one of these days I will get enough motivation to learn photography on my own!