Permantly banned from the Picture People

Tonight we had our group picture at the Picture People at our local mall. In the picture was just going to my kids, and my sisters children- so that made 6 kids total from ages 9 month- 13 years. We did one last year, but of course since Rachel came along it was time for a updated one. I dread pictures these days with oldest, as shes right at the Terrible Two's. Terrible Two's are not a myth people. They are real. Yes I was one of those that would look at ill behaving children and think to myself- "my child will never act like that". Well my little angel was the spawn of Satan tonight.

I met everyone there as I had to work, and my oldest sister Charlotte had asked everyone to dress in jeans and a red top- just like last year mind you. I thought it was dumb to do the same thing again, and personally I wanted to do something different or just have people wear what they want, but I complied. My kids arrived wearing the red, and so did my nephews, but my oldest sister kids (the one who set up the dress code) had her girls in non red items. This meant my nephews had a cow for being forced to wear the dress code, and one had to do a dress change before the picture could be taken. My nieces ages 11 and 7 had to primp their hair and makeup. Yes makeup. They also had head band issues. I didn't even know head band issues exhisted, but they do.

We get to our room to start the picture process, and they give us some new girl and its her first day on the job. That's when I knew we were in for some trouble...She placed them all in their positions, but before she would take the picture she would pause for like 30 seconds, I guess to try to get the biggest smiles possible. With six kids and my demon child wanting to break loose and run towards us, you just have to hope for them looking in the direction of the camera. So my sisters and Dave and I are jumping around trying to wrangle Laura to behave, and the rest of my nieces and nephews start fighting as they don't want to stand too close to each other or touch each other god forbid. Laura then has a melt down as she sees one of my nieces damn purses and wants it in the f^&*& picture. Told you she was a purse freak. The poor photographer looks like she is about to cry, so she leaves and gets back up. She comes back with another photographer to help her figure out some poses, and ways to restrain Laura. The process took a good hour. It was seriously the most stressful thing I have encountered in quite a while. Part of the problem was Laura got an ear infection and I had to take her to the Doc the day before, so she wasn't feeling good already. Clearly Laura's modeling career has hit a bump in the road. We also got in trouble during the session for using props improperly. I had taken some horse stuffed animals and pretended I was riding a pony around the store in attempts to get a smile out of the kids for a damn picture, and some workers didn't find me amusing.

So after they finally gave up on us, and ended the session, we waited for our pictures. We knew it was going to be slim pickings, and we had a good laugh while watching the slide show from the proofs. Seriously send me your email in the comment section, and when they email me the link tonight I will let you see our horrible pictures . We had a few so so ones, I personally wouldn't hang them on my wall, but hopefully grandparents and great grandparents will have bad enough eye site to love them anyways. One of the better ones Laura has a damn purse in the picture but it was the only way she would cooperate with us.

At least we wont have to do pictures again for quite some time now. I don't think they will let us back anyways.

My advice is take lots of pictures before they are near the Terrible Two mark as its not a myth.