Gettin' Jerky with Turkey

A friend of mine who works in retail called yesterday and we launched into a discussion about how early the holidays seem to have come this year. It's almost as if we are looking to bypass Thanksgiving and rush right into Christmas. Nearly every retailer had their holiday point of sale materials out at the beginning of this month and some are even offering the Black Friday sales now...no need to wait until next week. I, too, am guilty of rushing into it this year. I finished all of my shopping last week and today we went in for our annual holiday picture and to bring the kids to see Santa. I'm afraid that December is going to be a really long month because I'm normally rushing to fit it all in but this year I have nothing left to do. I was really disappointed at how our family photos turned out. We've always had great luck with JCPenny until now. This morning we thought we were ahead of the game. Our appointment was at 10:40. The mall doesn't even open until 11 so we expected to avoid a rush. When we got there we walked into at least 8 other families waiting for photos. We've found that it doesn't really matter if/when you booked your appointment. Prepare to wait. When you have an unruly almost-2-year-old, waiting around and wasting valuable time is not really the best option. We only actually waited about 20 minutes but by the time we got back there Talan was over it. The woman snapped 6 photos and spent no more than 5 minutes with us. I wasn't happy. On the flip side, the photo of the kids with Santa turned out really cute. Talan is a huge fan of the bearded man in the big red suit who gives him a candy cane every time he sees him. As opposed to most kids his age, he was happy to hop up onto Santa's lap. The trouble was getting him off and out of there. On the way home we called the Hellers to see if they could come to the rescue. We stopped by their house and Eric snapped several photos of us in their backyard. Wouldn't you know that the pictures he took were 100 times better than what we had taken in the studio? Eric Heller saved the Branton Christmas card this year! Speaking of the Hellers, they were gracious enough to host us last night for dinner, games and good times. We hadn't seen them in what feels like ages so it was great to catch up and to watch all of the kids together. Mr. "Professional Photographer" Heller took a ton of cute pictures last night. This is one of my favorites: