Five minutes of chaos yields a lifetime of (bad) memories

Unfortunately, family pictures didn't go so well on Saturday. Actually it would be more accurate to say that everything went really well until the picture part. For the first time in weeks, we were on time for something—even early! But we should have suspected something amiss when there were about 15 vehicles in the parking lot and we were the last portrait appointment of the day. We walked inside and there were a lot of people still there. We shortly found out that all of those people were also still waiting to get their pictures taken. “Oh no,” I thought. See, I had fed P. just right so that I wouldn't have to nurse her again until after we came home. I was wearing a one piece dress and, leaving out all of the unnecessary details, let’s just say that the outfit would be a nursing nightmare. But I give the kids credit, they did really, really great waiting around for over an hour in their dress clothes with constant instructions to not get dirty or mess up their hair or ... you get the idea. When we had been waiting well over an hour, it was decision time: do I feed P. or hope that we go soon. Before I could make up my mind, they called us. And P. started wailing. Then she wailed through all of the photos. Then she continued wailing until I got into the bathroom and fed her. Tyler had the unfortunate job of choosing which one of our awful pictures would be put in the church directory. I thought there at least had to be one decent one of the bunch, right? Wrong. E. and S. didn't smile at all and looked almost scared of the photographer. P. was wailing. And Tyler and I? We were trying to smile through the disappointment and frustration. (Disappointed because we were looking forward to having a good family picture; frustrated because the whole day led up to these pictures, we ended up having to wait so long, our sweet little baby had to painfully endure an empty tummy while the rest of us tried to ignore the fact that she was screaming, and our evening plans were discarded because we got out of there so late.) Next time, I think we will try not to pace ourselves as much and show up late like normal. Either that or maybe I should just wear a two-piece. Of course, as in almost all things, there is a silver lining in this dark, cloudy story: we get a free 8 x 10 photo of the disastrous event. It just might be a nice conversation starter when people come over to visit. Not too many people probably show off their worst family photo ever!