2011 Christmas card and family photo.
I called on Thursday, 12/15 to make an appointment for pictures to be taken at Portrait Innovations. Considering the usual mad crunch to get things done before leaving for Michigan, I thought it might be a longshot that they would have something available. They had a slot open the next night, a Friday! Phew! I haven't sent Christmas cards out in three years, I'm guessing. Doug didn't relish the thought of taking pictures, but was a good sport and went along with it. I'm so glad he did! We were running late for our appointment, but when we got there, we waited almost an hour and a half. Gulp.
Once they were ready to take our pictures, the kids were pros! The photographer was great with the kids. She asked Doug if he wouldn't mind slipping a red velvet Santa sleeve onto his arm. It was a glove like Santa's, with a red sleeve that only went up to his elbow. At first I thought...What in the world? She handed him a tray of "milk and cookies" and told the kids to pretend like they were giving milk and cookies to Santa. The kids thought it was absolutely hilarious that they were actually looking up at their Daddy and not Santa. Oh how funny this was to me (and them). Only Doug's (I mean Santa's) red sleeve was captured in the picture, along with the kids' expressions.
Portrait Innovations took some of the best pictures of Liam I've seen, so far. It is SO HARD to catch Liam with his eyes open! They did a great job. Doug also mentioned that we wouldn't be leaving their studio without the picture of Ava with the black background. He loved it.
We walked to an ice cream shop while our pictures were printing. The pictures were done at 9 p.m. We headed home. The next morning, I was hoping to print labels before the kids' gymnastics class. Unfortunately we didn't have enough labels. I ran to Publix and bought stamps. They didn't have the Avery labels. I went to Office Max and bought the labels. I headed home, printed out the Avery labels, grabbed our Christmas return address labels and the Christmas cards to be sent, and then headed to the kids' gymnastics class. I stuffed, applied stamps, return labels, address labels and sealed the envelopes during their gymnastics class. After gymnastics class, I dropped the nearly 70 Christmas cards in the post office mailbox, in time for the 1:15 p.m. mail pick-up. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing. Never before have Christmas cards been processed so quickly (14 hours, to be exact)! If we would've printed the cards or letters ourselves, I would've been sunk. It was nice for at least one holiday project to go quickly and turn out well!
Kudos to the kiddos and Doug for going along with it!
Peace, love and family-style,
Shelly, Doug, Ava and Liam
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