Christmas Picture Fun!

I ended up working on cases at the shop most of the day on Tuesday even though it was Gloria's birthday. I didn't feel too bad since she had already had two fun birthday parties AND my mom and dad picked her up around 10:00 a.m. and spent a good portion of the day with her at the mall. We met my two sisters-in-law and their families at Walmart for a group kid picture at 7:00 p.m. All the kid's were dressed in Christmasy colors with clean faces and (mostly) combed hair. We were hoping to surprise Rob's mom and dad with a picture of the grand kids for Christmas.

As the parent of a former two-year old girl, I could only sympathize with Matt and Marr as my youngest niece let us know in no uncertain terms that she would not be participating in this ridiculous scheme.

Instead of throwing in the towel, we headed over to familiar territory and hoped she would cooperate in the comfort her own home. The tears were gone but it was pretty exciting to her to have all this unexpected company!!!

The older kids were patient and tried to hold their poses while the adults all tried to cajole the youngest into sitting still for a moment!

She really didn't want much to do with our plan!!

Did we think about giving up????? Not for a moment. . .

We finally discovered the secret in two little magnets that Zach had in his pocket!! We quickly took a bunch of pictures and the magnets kept her happy enough to get a few really good ones!!

What a little cutie!!

Cody and Kelsey even had a few smiles left over for this lovely picture:

AND I finally found a picture for my Christmas cards!! Now I just have to find the time to send them out!!

I think Gloria's birthday turned out just fine.

This is one of my favorite pictures of her out of the hundreds that I took this year:

We rounded out the evening by wandering around Walmart looking for Christmas ideas. We even bought paint for Gloria's eventual room remodel!! We ended up back at the shop helping Rob with the cases until midnight when I came home and uploaded Gloria's birthday pics on my blog (until 3 a.m.!) with the beautiful song by Plumb which I happened to hear for the first time on Gloria's birthday!