Family Photo Fun….or Fiasco?!? (part 2)

In my endeavor to get our family pictures taken in time to be sent out for Christmas cards, I had committed to getting them done in downtown DC at 8:30 on a Saturday morning!

I had decided that in order to avoid scrambling out the door in a flurry of craziness the morning of pictures, I would do my best to prepare the day before. {One thing that I’m slowly learning the benefits of consistently doing}. 

The majority of us already had outfits to wear for the pictures, and the remainder had parts of an outfit that just needed a little something to be complete. I needed a shirt for Lucas, a belt for Cami, and tights for both girls.

With the exception of the tights, I found the items fairly quickly and early in the day. The tights were only found after we all scoured the entire mall for them that evening. {Apparently, plain, knit solid ivory tights were not in vouge this past fall season.}  

So far everything was going as planned.  

By the time we found the tights, it was nearing 8 p.m., which is the time I had wanted the kids to be in bed…asleep. I tried not to stress too much over it since we had made it our family night for that week and just had a five minute drive home.

However, as we headed to the car, we looked down to see that Sophia was missing a shoe!!! 


She has only one pair of black Mary Jane shoes that I bought specifically to switch between casual and more dressy outfits.  We had to find the missing one or she would be going shoe-less come Sunday! 

Honestly, in that moment I wanted to just forget the shoe, call it a night, and buy her a new pair!  The overwhelming thing about it was that throughout that entire evening we had been in what felt like every single store in the mall! I almost wanted to cry because by this time the kids were getting tired and I think we were all getting a little cranky! Nonetheless, Rudy and I decided we were going to make every effort to find that shoe.

Rudy suggested splitting up to cover more ground.  Who knew? Maybe it was just lying on the floor between stores and we would be able to spot it right away? {Yeah, right!}

Did I mention that Sophia wears infant shoe size 5?!  I felt as if we were searching for a needle in a haystack!

                                                                               {via}

We did pray about it since I believed it would have to take a miracle to find it in the large mall!  We are also trying to teach our children to take each big and little need to the Lord—but I’ll be the first to admit that I was a somewhat very doubtful. 

Thankfully, the splitting up method worked great allowing us to to cover twice as much ground and after about 20 minutes of searching we found it hidden half-way under a rack in Old Navy. It actually turned into a good teaching opportunity for the kids and Lucas was excited to be the one to find it! =)
By the time we worked our way back to the end of the mall where we had parked, it was nearing 8:30 p.m.  Even though I was looking forward to our pictures the next day my immediate focus was to get home as soon as possible, bathe the kids, and put them to bed. I then hurriedly proceeded to put together, iron, and set out each of our outfits to make sure everyone would be good-to-go in the morning. 

My plan was to get up at 5 a.m. to allow for any glitches that might would probably take place in the morning routine. {With our family you never know, and we tend to find ourselves in some interesting predicaments. We often say that we couldn’t even make up some of the stuff that has actually happened to us!}

As I pillowed my head later that night, I had feelings of both excitement and nervousness.  Before giving in to sleep, my last thought was that I not only wanted the photographer to be able to capture some good shots (and I had every confidence that he would!), but most importantly I wanted us to have a fun, memorable time as a family during the entire shoot. 

Little did I know how memorable the next day would prove to be...

Have you had a similar experience? If so, what item did you lose and how quickly did you happen to find it? Or maybe you didn’t ever find it….??

I love hearing from {any} readers out there, so feel free to comment! =)

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