The Jones Girls

Today I took the girls to get Christmas Holiday portraits done.   Our appointment was at 3:00pm at JCPenney’s Photography studio.    It took me over 2 hours to get the girls ready…hair up in pin curls and dressed in their beautiful Christmas dresses with tights and new dressy shoes.

I made this appointment almost 2 weeks ago and the photographers have called me twice this week to verify we wanted the Christmas Holiday background and to confirm our appointment.    I reserved an hour appointment for photography.

We arrive and the photographer said she wasn’t ready for us.   She did not have the background put together yet and could I please turn their TV on and play a Disney movie for the girls while she sets up the studio.    So I did that.  She asked if I could come help her put the background together.  She had no idea how it was supposed to be put together.   So I helped as best as I could.   In the meantime, my girls have been intently watching the Disney movie for over 20 minutes.

We finished doing the background and then I had to get the girls unglued from the TV.  That was difficult.  Of course they didn’t want to go get pictures now because I interrupted them watching their Disney movie. 

Needless to say, the girls didn’t cooperate with the photo shoot.  It went horrible.   Not one good shot!!   Everyone was crying and protesting.  I was frustrated.  The photographer didn’t know what to do, so she pulled out a baby rattle to try to appease them.  Ummm, a baby rattle?   Give me  a break!!   She didn’t know how to position the girls and asked me to give her some ideas.   I was not impressed and very annoyed.

I cut the photo shoot short and told her this was going really bad.  We didn’t get one good shot.    I packed up the girls and headed out.  The photographer took me to the register and offered me a free photo sheet and appologized saying that she wasn’t ready for us.   I told her I was frustrated because it took me over 2 hours to get the girls ready and now I would have to reschedule and do it all over again.    I asked to speak to her manager.  Then the bomb drop…she said she was the manager!!    My mouth hung open in disbelief.    Not good at all.

When I got home, I called the manager at JCPenney’s and she had the district manager of photography call me.  I spoke to Nicole Medina and she apologized for the whole experience.  She said the photographer was very good and had 3 years experience being a photographer for JCPenney’s and that she became manager of photography for our JCPenney’s just a couple of weeks ago.    She offered me a few free photo sheets.

I had to reschedule our photo shoot for this Saturday.  We will also do a family portrait also.   Hopefully it will go much better than today…

I took Amanda and Maryssa to the Public Preschool to be evaluated on Thursday May 28th.  

Since Amanda is being followed by the school district as a possible special needs due to her disability with her right arm, they want to do a global evaluation, academically and physically.   So Thursday we had it done.   She was tested at a 3-1/2 to 4 year old level!!  The preschool teachers and the school psychologist said they have never used the some of the pages of the evaluations for a 2 year old before and were amazed.  Way to go Amanda!!  So she will not need speech therapy or Special Ed Kindergarten.

Maryssa got evaluated because she currently receives speech therapy once a week and the school district wanted to see if Maryssa would benefit from the Public Preschool that would offer her speech therapy.  She tested much lower than Amanda in terms of receptive language which is processing and understanding language.   She tested a little bit better in her expressive language than receptive language.  Expressive language is how she communicates and talks.     I am hoping she will receive speech therapy at the preschool because I think she will benefit greatly from it over a traditional preschool because of the smaller classroom size vs. a larger classroom size in a traditional preschool.   Maryssa is such an adorable and darling sweetheart.  She is just my precious!!

We have a follow up appointment on the results of their evaluations on June 10th.