Kicking off the holidays

We decorated our tree last week. The kids were super duper excited. Honestly, I was pretty excited too.


Our tree looks beautiful, although it is a little bottom heavy:)

I went to the mall on Black Friday and all I got were crappy pictures

Sometimes I do really stupid shit. For example, I scheduled an appointment to have Christmas pictures taken on Black Friday. Why would any sane and reasonable person do that? I have no logical explanation to justify my stupidity.

My appointment was at 10am. I left the house at 9:30, giving us plenty of time to get to the mall. Although the traffic was CRAZY, we pulled into the parking lot with ten minutes to spare. But I couldn't find a fucking parking spot. I drove around and around the mall. There were no spots. None. Finally, I ended up parking approximately 300 miles away from the main entrance of the mall. And it was pure luck that I got that spot 300 miles away from the mall. I was actually thankful when I found it.

I bundled up the kids, put them in the stroller, and started walking toward the mall. It was cold out. Really cold. Porgie started crying for her gloves, which I had left at home. The wind was whipping around us, our hair was blowing every which way, and when we arrived at the main entrance, we looked like shit. We entered the front doors and were greeted by thousands of shoppers. It was so ridiculously busy, that I had an incredible hard time pushing my stroller through the crowds without bumping into someone. About half way to the portrait studio, I reconsidered my plans and thought about turning around and going home. But the kids looked so darn cute in their Christmas outfits, that I decided to keep going.

When we finally arrived, the studio was fairly calm. We were taken back almost immediately, which was awesome. But then we had a major setback. Izzy wouldn't smile. The kid was miserable. I snorted like a pig, walked like monkey, jumped like a kangaroo, did cartwheels, and jumped through a ring of fire, but he wouldn't smile. Porgie was great, but Izzy was entirely unamused. After 30 minutes of pure torture, I ended up with these photos...




I hate these photos. In addition to Izzy's refusal to smile, the backgrounds look cheesy and lame. When I sat down to order photos, I didn't want to purchase any of them. I did like the one of Porgie giving Izzy a kiss, but you can't see her face. So I said fuck it, and made another appointment to have their pictures taken again.

Now I have to go back to that godforsaken mall. With my uncooperative children. Life is unfair.

Adding a little ethnic diversity to our Christmas...

One year John and I were shopping for Christmas decorations, and we stumbled upon some awesome decorations - a black Santa and a black angel. Of course we purchased them, and proudly displayed them on our front porch. One year my MIL commented that "Santa has a tan." I had to correct her, "No, he is black."

We are adding some ethnic diversity to our boring, lower middle class, predominantly white neighborhood.