Look at these pictures! Aren’t they amazing?!? I mean, maybe only I think that ’cause they are my kids, but seriously, they are pretty good for “school” pictures…….aren’t they?
Usually, with the pictures that we get home from the school, it’s a giant crap shoot as to whether or not they are actually going to be good pictures or not.
This year we took the regular school photo’s in September or October, and then about a month ago the kids came home with another form for more school pictures.Â
I have to admit that I was a little annoyed.  I’ve never been to a school that did school pictures twice in one year, and while I can appreciate that kids change and grow so fast, and that they do look different – sometimes – from the beginning of the year to the end of the year……..all I could think was “money grab.”
It turns out that I wasn’t that far off.
This was a fundraiser for the school. It would have been nice had a notice come home explaining what the deal was, and maybe even the fact that this was a professional photographer doing the pics, and not some person who sees way too many “little brats” in the course of the day to really care if their hair is sticking out all over the place, and they have a giant piecs of lunch wedged in their front teeth, and their shirt has water stains on it from where they were “washing” their hands (and the rest of the washroom – it looks like)…..not that I would have ever really experienced anything like this particular scenario………
Any way, the day of the school pictures, I didn’t even try to do anything with my kids. Told them to pick up whatever sort of clean clothes they could find off the floor of their bedrooms, and if they weren’t too dirty , then to throw they on. I think I yelled at least twice for them to brush their teeth, although seeing as I didn’t march them into the bathroom personally – they just assumed that I was joking, and I don’t think it got done. Looking at the pictures, I think that the girls brushed their hair that morning, although you can’t always tell with Xan…..at least in the pony tails, you can’t tell how greasy Geli’s hair is. Aren’t I the picture of a perfect mom? Dirty clothes, Greasy Hair, and no teeth brushed…….sweet!
Then the pictures came home, and I was shocked. Despite my lack of grooming, the pictures are so sweet.
Although I do think that Jeremy’s head is cocked over a little to far to the right – they are still amazing pictures. Xan just about ALWAYS takes a good picture, so I wasn’t really shocked when I saw hers. Jeremy’s wasn’t too bad either. I will admit that I’d have loved to see Geli smiling a bit more, but she usually has such a hard time taking really good pictures that I was THRILLED with this one of her.
The deal with the school is that they got 1 dollar for each child they took a picture of. Then the company developed the photos, chose the best one. DEVELOPED and SENT HOME 6 sheets of varying sizes and types of the photo, AND once you’ve got those cute pictures in your grubby little fingers (although I’m starting to swell, and so mine are not as little as I’d like them to be) it’s awfully hard to refuse them.Â
Sneaky, Sneaky photography company.
It was $37 for the package of 6 sheets, or $14 per sheet. Obviously it was cheaper to get the package, but I really didn’t want to pay over $100 for some pictures of my kids no matter how nice they were.
I did however, take one sheet of each of them WAY OVERPRICED at $14 and got two “3 x 5″‘s and eight “1 x 2″s or whatever the little tiny size is.
If even only a handful of the parents did this, then that photography studio is making a killing. It annoys me that I was sucked into their little scheme.  Oh well! Cute pics! Now I just have to get over it!