Justen got home from work at 12:15, we left at 12:35 to get the cake and balloons. I called on our way to the cake place and ordered the 3 balloons from the grocery store. Justen went in to get the cake while I fed the baby in her carseat. 10 minutes later, he sends me a text saying "the cake will be freshly iced." I called him and he said they haven't even started the cake yet! It was supposed to be ready at noon! While they finished the cake, we drove to the grocery store to get the balloons. Guess what! There are TWO grocery stores on the same road, and I ordered the balloons at the other store... So I had the surly employee blow up a few balloons while I got some baby food. I asked her for hot pink, pink, and blue, and she used BLACK ribbon to tie them. When I commented on it, she gave me the rudest look, and it wasn't worth the fight. We drive back to the cake place, and Justen brings out the smash cake, which looks like crap. They gave us $5 back, how nice of them. It looked like something I could do myself, which is why we ordered a cake in the first place, so it looked great!
At this point, we are running about 20 minutes behind. I tried calling the photographer to give her a head's up, and she didn't answer AND her voicemail was full... When I got off the phone, and after I stopped crying, I looked at the navigation and realized we just missed our exit. Now we were running 30 minutes late. It was a lot of back country roads, and as Justen popped over a hill, there was a stop sign and a car pulling out. No way we could stop, but he slammed on the brakes and swerved around the car! I gasped, Lana giggled, and the cake went flying. Great. It was still okay, just slightly ajar, and mushed on one side.
We finally got there, and the photographer wasn't upset that we were late, thank goodness, but we didn't have any time to waste. We left for another location, and Lana was as uncooperative as a 10-month old could be. She wouldn't stand up, so when we sat her down she ate anything within reach. Justen and I spent an hour, while the photographer tried to get Lana to smile, prying leaves, dirt, hay, and soybeans from her grasp. She barfed all over her cute pink jean jacket. She tried eating every necklace or bracelet I put on her. She woudn't look at the camera. She wouldn't smile.
When we got back to the photographer's house and it was time to take pictures of Lana and her smash cake, I was worn out and sweaty, and it was only 61 degrees!!! We dressed her in her cute tutu and pink onesie, put on her blue bracelets and necklace, then took off the necklace, and sat her down with the crappy cake. I don't have any before pictures of the cake, either, since it looked so bad... And that's okay, because all I cared about was the smashing pictures.
What. A. Bust.
Lana hates cake. She cried, she pushed it away, she refused to taste it, she refused to touch it. We gave her a balloon and she liked that! But the cake, she just couldn't have cared less. There was a really cool photo op of Lana slapping the balloon and cake flying everywhere, but the photographer missed it because she was looking at her camera. That's when I called it. We were done. Her next appointment was there, Lana was crying, I was covered in cake from trying to get Lana to cover herself in cake... Stick a fork in us, we were done.
The drive home was in silence, I was so disappointed at the whole thing. I was actually mad at my sweet Lana for not liking cake and for not smiling at strangers while sitting in wet leaves with no socks on. The nerve of her.
HA! So, that's what taking her pictures was like for me.
Here's 3 pics the photographer posted to facebook this morning.
I was wrong. I was upset over nothing. The photographer captured my sweetheart and no one would ever know how unhappy she was, unless they read this blog post.
