And a Bahumbug to you to.

It is our tradition to get family pictures this time of year. When we lived in Seattle We went to picture people to get our pictures. We always had a good experience with them and always got great pictures. Well of course there is nothing like that here in rexburg, or Idaho for that matter. Our only choices for pictures is jcpennys or sears. I looked into both. jcp charged $9.99 for a sitting fee person. I found a coupons but they all were for only one free sitting fee. So we would still have to pay $40 just to sit down. Not good enough. So sears it was with only a $14.99 sitting fee for the whole family. They day comes of our appointment, we get all spiffed up. Once we get there we wait and wait.Were they busy? No, there was only one other family there but they were viewing their pictures. There were 2 studios open and one of the workers was available but she was on her cell talking. Finally she got off and called us back. Our appointment was at 7pm finally at about 7: 35 we get in. And off we go, she gets us settled in our spots and starts taking the pictures. Now any of you with children know that in order for your kids to look at the camera and smile you have to have a photographer who will basically make a fool of them self and be totally silly. This was not happening for us, she would just yell at the kids to look at he camera. Didn't work of course. After about 4-5 poses the kids were done and frankly so was I. My husband gave me a look that told me he was thinking the same thing I was. " I don't think we are getting any of these picuters. " So we told the yelling lady that "I think we were done". But she informed us that she needed to have 9 poses so 4 more. Ok what ever just hurry and snap some pictures, we are so done and just don't care anymore. When we were finally done taking the pictures we were ready to view them. But our lovely photographer informed us that they had closed at 8, it was now 8:35( funny that its the same time we waited while she talked on her cell) and that we would have to come back the next day to view them. We then told her that we lived in rexburg( a 30-40 minute drive away) and that we didn't want to come back tomorrow we just wanted to see the pictures. We already knew what package we wanted. and that we were only going to get one pose for all the pictures that we needed. She wasn't having it. So we went out to make our appointment to come back. But there was 2 other families out there waiting to view there pictures. We brought that to her attention but she just said "sorry we are closed". Now let me just say that Colin was pretty mad at this point and I knew we just had to get out of there so he, we could vent. The next morning we called the place to talk to the manager, but we were told that she wasn't in yet. So we talked to the sears big store manager who9o apologized and told us that she would have the studio manager call us. Never happened. We called a couple of other times but she was never in. So when we went in at 6:30 to view our pictures we were told that the manager got off at 6. Which mean that she was there the times we called. We were then told to wait. Of course the workers were in the empty studio just chatting and laughing. Finally they called us up and asked our name again said they were having a hard time locating our file of pictures. After another 20 minute wait they call us back. The pictures were just like our whole experience with sears. Horrible. Most of them the kids weren't looking. There were a few that had majors shadows over a few faces. But 1 did turn out. It was the one where we told the kids to make funny faces so that we could get another pose to get to the 9. It was cute enough to not pass up. But not what we were looking for in a family pictures to give to family members. So on the way home Colin and I decided to just wait till we get home to Seattle to get anymore pictures, at the place we know and love!!! We will never be back to Sears.

Also we decided to try and get photo Christmas cards this year, but that means that we needed to have a good family picture to put on them. here are a few of our attempts at getting a family shot