Flashback Friday: Walmart Portrait Studio

It's flashback Friday over at the other blog, which means I've been going through old photos. I found these portraits of Clio that we had taken at the Walmart photo studio in Illinois when we visited Barb and Pete in May, 2008, about 6 weeks before Eleri was born. I could have sworn I wrote about the session back then, but I couldn't find the post. Until....I checked the DRAFTS from back then, and found this:

"Flipping through a Parents magazine on the plane to Illinois, I was inspired by a few ads for various portrait studios- JC Penney, Target, etc.- and suggested a trip to Wal*Mart as one potential outing with Clio. The idea was to let her pick out a new outfit, and then go ahead and have her first formal portrait sitting.

Let's just say it did not end up being a great experience. I take responsibility for the fact that the timing was just bad- we were really pushing things with both lunch time and nap time, and by the time we actually got started, Clio was not her absolute best.

But mostly, it had to do with the fact that the seemingly to-good-to-be-true deal is, in fact, too good to be true."

I don't remember the exact details of the bait and switch, but I do remember that there was one, and that we went in for a $10 package of photos and ended up spending more than $30, and the photos weren't even particularly good.

But from the vantage point of nearly three years later, they are good! They are! I mean, Clio has had many cuter moments, but aren't these fun?

My Story

For those of you just joining me, there's been a whole lot of blogging going on, and this is actually the last in a string of related posts. It will all make a lot more sense if you start at the bottom, with Weekend in Morrison, and work your way back up.

Picking up where we left off:

As for me, my role this weekend was partly to capture everyone else, as family photographer (I was even the one who insisted we go to the Wallmart Portrait Studio; more on that later. Maybe.) When we finally got them all uploaded the other night, Dave declared that there weren't many good ones. And it's true, I tend to shoot for narrative, not light and composition, and Pete got many better versions of essentially the same shot. But for a little while on a gloomy Saturday, while the boys were building fires and Barb was fixing lunch or cutting asparagus (more on that later, too), Clio volunteered herself as a willing subject, once again wanting to have her picture taken and then look at it in the viewfinder. And I kind of like the resulting series of portraits, for their own sake.

Clio's Story

Clio had two main obsessions while in Morrison: Kittens, and this little chair that Barb found in the garage.

She sat every which way on this chair,

And even did her best to clean it, top and bottom


(whereupon she was introduced to her first actual spiderweb). Every time we went into the house, we passed through the garage. And every time we passed through the garage, she wanted to climb behind the cars and get on that little chair. (For those of you who know Pete and are familiar with his garage full of many collections, you will understand this is completely hazardous.) She especially wanted to bring the little chair into the house.


Once again it is clear that this kid needs a chair or her own.

I saved the kittens for last because really, who wants to look at a chair from many angles once you've been seduced by a toddler playing with kittens? We made two separate trips to Great Grandpa's to see the new kittens,

and also one very friendly mama cat.

Do you like my outfit?

Clio was highly enthusiastic about all things feline, and spent a lot of time observing the goings-on withing their shed.


When Pete suggested she "go on in there and pick one up," she went ahead and did.

Much to my surprise. Flash back to September, here she is with my brother's kitten Milo;

what a difference a few months can make!

Daddy's Story

Well, boys will be boys.

This weekend, Dave got to play with hand saws and chain saws, climb on the roof, start a really big fire, and show off his daughter at part of a Memorial Day campout in the woods, and annual event at the home of his best friend from Childhood.



Oh, and dress the part.

What could be better?

Grandpa's Story

Timing work can be unpredictable on a farm; because of bad weather earlier in the week, Pete ended up spending quite a bit of Sunday and part of Monday making hay (I now truly understand the expression "make hay while the sun shines"), but he took great pleasure in bringing Clio along for whatever chores were appropriate, like feeding an orphaned calf. Mostly, in down time, I think he just reveled in the common refrain of the weekend: "Grandpa! Grandpa! Pick me up!" And obliged his granddaughter in the house, in the fields, and on Great-Grandpa's farm.



In the end, she returned the favor, doing a little of the heavy lifting herself, and leaving him in a higher place than she found him.

Grandma's Story

As she always does, Grandma spent the weekend taking care of all of us, preparing 3 adult and sometimes 3 separate kid meals a day (plus desserts!), insisting that everyone sit down even while she was tirelessly on her feet, calling ahead to Wallmart for Portrait Studio opening hours, and figuring out where we might find a jigsaw puzzle on Memorial Day.

We also managed to arrange a whole lot of Clio time (I very generously slept in and took naps to stay out of the way), much of which had Barb schooling her in the ways of the farm, from chores like sweeping

and clearing brush,

to feeding the cats (which I won't go into here- that's a part of Clio's Story).

She also found plenty of ways to entertain Clio, from an old favorite, bubbles,

to a new one, playing the Piano. They did some lovely duets of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Barb taught Clio all about not banging on the keys.
By the end of the weekend, they even LOOKED like two peas in a pod.

Weekend in Morrison

We spent Memorial day weekend in Morrison with Grandma and Grandpa, and I've been trying to get various posts going since we arrived home Tuesday night (Another List of Travel Don'ts; On Having a Portrait Taken at Wallmart, etc.), but there have been some technical difficulties with our home computer, and work is crazy with our David Byrne project opening on Saturday. As always with a trip that brings many new experiences (for Clio, and sometimes the rest of us), there's also just so much to report that I really do wish I had been reporting all along.

We made the trip last minute partly because Grandpa (Pete) received the bad news that his cancer has returned after 4 years disease-free, and because he will need to undergo treatment this summer, it is unclear whether he and Barb will make their annual summer trip to New York. There's also nothing like an almost-2-year-old grandchild to cheer you up; we figured the least we could do was transport some Clio joy right to a Grandpa in need of a little spirit lift. Looking through the photos, it's funny to see that we each really had our own narrative arc over the weekend. I'll give you everyone's story separately, but in the end, the whole was greater than the sun of its parts, and I'd say that all of our spirits were lifted by our own experience of the weekend, even if we didn't know we needed a boost.