Time To Get Your Picture Pages

Several weeks back, Tim's mom mentioned in passing that the last family photo they have was taken when Tim was entering the 9th grade. For those keeping score at home, that would be 1988. He and his sisters have changed just a wee bit since then, so I suggested that maybe we should have one taken over Christmas. Now, at the time, I thought Tim's other sister (who is not local) would be coming out for Christmas as we had offered to fly her out and she was just supposed to be getting us dates any minute now.

She did not come. Essentially she could not make up her mind about when the best time to come would be.

So last week I asked if we shouldn't just go ahead and get a family photo taken anyway. Because after all that dithering about coming out or not, I have kind of had it with the other sister right now and it would be nice to have a family photo that was taken in this century. She hesitantly agreed that yes, that would probably be a good thing. I assured her that when (ha ha) the other sister comes, we can go get another group shot taken and that removed the rest of the hesitancy. And so I made an appointment and then foolishly asked "What should we wear?"

Oh heavens.

After ten rounds of "Well, we could wear this...or! We could wear this other thing...or!" I suggested maybe we all wear khakis and the guys could wear red sweaters (they all look good in red) and the ladies in black (because it's slimming, therefore we all look good in it) and it coordinates but also wouldn't be getting us nominated for Awkward Family Photos anytime soon.

This was the plan until she started fretting about shoes. Because she has foot issues and so is pretty much limited to sneakers. So, to make it a bit more ok to wear sneakers, I said, "How bout we do the same tops but just all wear jeans, then we can all wear sneakers and you'll be set." And that was good. Except that she didn't have a sweater that Tim's dad liked. So she went out to buy a new sweater with, I thought, the idea that the guys were in red and the ladies in black.

Then Tim's sister decided she was going to dress up. Now, Tim's sister hates being the center of attention and doesn't want people staring at her, etc. So with the rest of us in jeans and sweaters, I said that perhaps she wouldn't want to do that, because she would stick out. So there was much ado, but eventually she agreed to wear jeans. And then Tim's mom said, "The sweater I got yesterday is blue." So I'm thinking, ok, fine, the girls will all switch to navy. Still slimming! But no, it's powder blue.

At this point, it's about five minutes til we need to be leaving the house if we're going to be on time for our appointment, so I kind of threw up my hands and decided we should just roll with it. And we did.

Surprisingly, the photos turned out pretty good. Tim's mom sticks out a bit, but there are 3 in red and 2 in black and one in powder blue and the photographer had a good eye and made it work. The sneakers don't look out of place and the kiddo grinned and hammed about for the camera.

So after the shots were taken, it was time to choose the various poses and sizes that we wanted to take home.

Can I just say "Oh heavens" again?

After about ten minutes of Tim's folks going back and forth about maybe we should get one of this for someone and another of this for someone else but I don't really like me in that one or you in this one and that's not my favorite and can you skip down and let's look at that one I finally shooed everyone but Tim's mom off to find lunch (because by this point the kiddo was about ready to melt down if he didn't get food, stat) so that some sort of organized viewing and deciding could happen, because we'd been there 2 hours at this point and I worried that without drastic action, it would be closing time before we actually managed to escape. Possibly without ever actually choosing photos.

Even without distraction, it took another hour to get things chosen, sizes decided on, photos printed and paid for, and us out of there. Some of this was due to the studio being overbooked and understaffed, I'll admit. But the larger part was owing to the vast difference in how my in-laws and I make decisions. And now I understand just a bit better how 22 years elapse between family photos.