School Pictures

Yesterday was picture day.  I hate picture day.  This means that in addition to the normal chaos that is the morning.  We have extra.  Extra clothing choices,  shoe choices,  picture package choices and of course hair choices.  Now the boys are supposed to be easy.  And thankfully, Jack was.  Mark however (sigh) should be, but isn't.  And Emma, never easy.  The kids came home on Tuesday all excited about picture day.  Most of the excitement is due to the fact that they get to dress out of uniform.  Now even that should be easy, but no.  There are rules at a private school for picture day.  No spaghetti strap dresses,  boys shirts must have collars, no jeans, must have khaki pants with a belt, nothing torn, dresses and skirts must be knee lenght or below, and the list goes on.  As i  said Jack was easy.  Pull a collared shirt out of a bin of clothing Mark outgrew, New Shirt, some pants and a belt.  TA-DA.  Mark however, had the audacity to GROW.  I knew he only had one pair of pants that fit, what I failed to realize was that he had run through the knee of these last Thursday.  So I stacked up 4 pairs of pants to have him try on the night before.  We didn't try then on until the next morning as we are getting ready for school.  They were all way to short.  I mean at least 2 inches to short.  I can not send a middle school child to school with floods.  Middle school is enough torture without standing out because you're wearing floods.  So i dig out the sewing basket, find a patch and iron a patch on the inside of the knee.  I then flip over the pants and apply fray-check to the ends of the tear and pray he doesn't get detention for ripped pants.  Emma (shakes head) were to begin.  Emma had at least 4 dress choices.  She had to wear a dress.  We had one all picked out on Tuesday, but NOOOO, lets try them all on Wednesday morning.  She finally settled on the dress, yes it was the same one we had picked out.  Now hair.   Emma wanted her hair in ringlets.  Why?  Who knows.  She has natural curly hair but never wants to wear it curly.  But today, curls.  We put rollers in her hair for 1 hour before bed and by the time we took them out while we were brushing our teeth. Way too tight.  Shirley temple tight.  We then have to wet it out, blow it dry and try to refine some of the curl we took out when we got it wet.  To wear a bow or to not wear a bow that was the question.  Ugh.  I was done at this point, so i was less than patient.  Decided on a bow. (what a relief)  Ran out the door and made it to school.  

When i picked them up at school, shirts were untucked and stained with who knows what, Jack had Oreo cookie crumbs on his face and Emma's hair, while still in ringlets was  stuck up everywhere, and pulled out of it's bow.  Glad I went through all that work.  Can't wait to see the pictures. (oh heavy sigh.)