Things I will do differently next year

1. I will buy the girls' Christmas outfits before Thanksgiving.
2. The girls will be with me to pick out their Christmas outfits, so no one can give me any grief.  And to make sure the shoes fit.
3. The photo shoot for our Christmas card will take place before Thanksgiving, but only after the new Christmas outfits are purchased.
4. I will leave empty space at the top of the Christmas card photo so when Tiny Prints crops it even though I've uploaded a photo the exact size of the card, I won't waste over an hour trying to find a work-around.  And then keeping my fingers crossed until the cards are delivered.  
5. I will order our Christmas cards at the beginning of December so I don't have to pay for super rush delivery.

So in my defense, I had been looking for the girls' Christmas outfits but couldn't find what we were looking for.  I asked the girls back at the beginning of November if they wanted Christmas dresses and they said yes.  At their age, I'm not going to force them to wear something specific to family parties but I was happy when they all said they wanted Christmas dresses.  I like our holiday card to have a holiday photo and wearing Christmas dresses is an easy way to fulfill my quirky need.  Anna was the only one who said she wanted something specific - a red velvet dress with a big bow in the front.  I explained to her that I may not be able to find one with a bow on the front and she said that was fine.  How hard could it be to find a red velvet dress?

I freaking looked everywhere and couldn't find any red velvet dresses or if I came across a dress I thought she would be satisfied with, I couldn't find coordinating dresses/outfits for Allie and Emily.  I knew the clock was ticking on pulling together holiday cards and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I would luck out and get a good picture when we picked out our Christmas tree, but then we went to the Boy Scouts lot and not the tree farm so that idea flew out the window.  On Friday, I drove down the outlets.  I went in every store that sold clothes for kids and finally, in the last store, Hartstrings, I found red velvet dresses.  I bought two different red velvet ones (the only two they had) and one plaid silk one.  Anna was allowed to pick her favorite first - she gave me some grief over the bow on the back, blah, blah.  And then some of the shoes didn't fit.

Saturday morning, we set up my roll of seamless paper in the living room for what I was hoping would be a quick photo shoot.  Yeah, it was quick all right.  There was some non-cooperation with the posing, like "smiling" with a mouth wide open or squeezing a sister so she tries to squirm away.  To quote a Little Critter book, I was just so mad.  I only took nine pictures of the three of them together.  One is all you need for a card, right?  They all wanted individual photo shoots after that and of course, cooperated for those.  I need to work out my bribery plan ahead of time next year.