Yesterday

Yesterday was so fun! I mentioned Chris told Alice happy birthday first thing, he said that she said it was too early to be her birthday, turned over and kept sleeping. That so sounds like her. When we got up, Jake said it wasn’t her birthday until we had a cake, but she quickly corrected him.

I decided when they were babies that I wanted to get their pictures taken on the day of their birthday every year, last year we didn’t but every other year we have. So we headed off to the mall to get pictures taken, stayed there to have lunch and shopped a bit. Alice picked out a huge Strawberry Shortcake coloring book, as well as another coloring book and a Strawberry Shortcake book that has lip gloss with it. Jake was happy because he also got a coloring book and for a moment was disappointed that he didn’t get as many books as Alice, but I reminded him it was her birthday. He then declared that he loved Alice’s birthday because he got a coloring book too. We decided to do a couple of small gifts on the actual birthday and the bigger gift at the birthday party.

A note about Sears Portrait Studio – I was so annoyed with them! I said I wanted just head shots or waist up shots, I don’t know why, I just did. Then the woman said they were required to take full body shots. Required? I doubt it, they just want the chance to get me to buy more! They took nine pictures of her, and about half had a very fake smile. I was disappointed in the girl who was trying to get Alice to smile because she would miss the real smile by seconds and then get the fake smile. But the other half were cute. So we go to view the pictures and she starts showing me all the enhanced ones – black and white, sepia, birthday borders, birthday collages, etc. – and I said I’m not interested in any of those can you remove them so I can just look at the regular pictures. She said no she couldn’t remove them. Slightly irritated me, but let’s just move on. The girl gets up to do something, leaving us to look at the pictures, and Jake clicks the button on the mouse – and a menu pops up with the first thing being ‘remove picture’ – *sigh*. I was very irritated at that point but let it all go. I probably shouldn’t have, I should have deleted the enhanced pictures or said something to her.

We are going back next week for Jake’s birthday pictures but I admit I’m not looking forward to it. I may call JCPenney’s instead, but otherwise I just don’t know where to go! We used to go to the Picture People because they had a birthday coupon where you got a free 8X10 and no sitting fee – which is all I would walk out with. I just use the picture to hang on the wall, we don’t send them to anyone because we do holiday cards.

We went to see Underdog at the theater which turned out to be a great movie. I wasn’t looking forward to it at first because it didn’t look that great, but I’m glad we went. Afterward we had dinner at a chinese buffet restaurant where they sang to Alice and gave her a little piece of cake. She is easily embarrassed and hid behind me while they sang, but did blow the candle out when they all walked away.

It was a fun, tiring day. And we are doing it all over again on Wednesday!