Church Pictures

Today was the day that the girls and I went to have our pictures taken for the directory at church. DH isn't a big fan of church, so we go and he doesn't, thus the 3 of us in the picture. 5 years ago when this was done, B was crying and the picture was crazy. They offer you an 8x10 of the picture you pick for the directory for free, then they take "extra" pictures to try to get you to buy.
I picked the girls up from school and took them straight to church. When I made the appointment time, I thought this time would be a lot better than 7 at night or so. Here is the exchange...

We go into the bathroom, B heads for the mirror and starts making her hair go straight down by the sides of her face.
"I look hot with my hair like this." My mom's voice flew into my head, "Push your hair back so I can see your beautiful face." (She said this to me 1000 times at least when I was younger.) So I wet my hands (with spit) in the sink to unstatic-cling it. I went with the hair by her face, whatever, I thought.
I (spit on my hands again) wet my hands and turned toward Kelsie to try to control the curls. A little water puts the random curls in their place. She threw a fit like I was coming after her hair with syrup.She hissed, "My hair looks FINE!" Ok, I thought, pick your battles.

We get called into the "studio", where the very nice lady is trying to crack jokes. Nothing is going to crack the steely gaze of K. The lady sets us up, my kids are trained that when a camera is in your face you smile, everything is fine...Then the lady says, "Honey, let me fix your hair" to K. K is a great kid, but she can be very stubborn at times. She GLARES at the nice lady (who ran away, just kidding) and I sweetly tell the lady, "It is what it is, don't go there with her". As a photographer, I felt her pain. She looked very uncomfortable knowing that in these pictures one curl was out of control.

Make it through the pictures and head to the "portrait" room. The (stressed out) guy starts with pulling up all of our pictures and narrows it down to the best of the bunch. (Not an easy task.) Then he tries to sell us a $635 package!
I almost
gagged,
laughed at him,
ran out of the room screaming.
These were not the pictures I wanted to spend that much on. Throw us outside and take some pictures (with DH) and then we'll talk.

I took the girls outside after the picture debacle and had them climb a beautiful pink tree and shot this....
Much better than the inside ones.

Later in the evening, I was back there for a Christian Ed meeting. We were talking about the pictures. One lady said that the guy tried to sell her her portrait on canvas in a frame, "for her children when she passed on". Nothing makes you feel better than making you think about your demise. Another woman said, she looked horrible, her husband looked horrible, but her 16 year old daughter looked great. Then our minister walked in and we asked him how his pictures were and he announced that he looked like a "goat" in them. He definitely has a good sense of humor. At least we won't have to go through this again for another 5 years!