Thanks a lot Walmart

For starters, I don't have any before and afters of my house because I have no "afters." Everything is half way done (or a quarter done if we are being honest). It is going to take a while to see any real improvement. Anyway on to the main post:
I have a love/hate relationship with Walmart. I love the low prices, the one stop shopping. I hate that we are losing any semblance of variety. They addict you to their stupid prices, then drop all but two types of syrup. They run out the little stores that sell the type of syrup I like, and then I have no way of getting said syrup. Funnily enough this post is not about syrup either.
I am ranting about Walmart because I hate that it puts the mom and pop shops out of business and I have a harder time finding the quality products I want. The same could be said about photography here in our town. It use to be that the several little photography studios would do all the school photos. They would come in, spend time, make sure ribbons were where they needed to be, eyes weren't closed during the shot, and that the kids smiled. Unfortunately we had a walmart-esq type photography gestapo come in and underbid our local studios. Sure they put our shiny packets, but ultimately we are paying a smidgen less for inferior products and service.
Any of you who know Ella know she loves to get her photo taken. She loves to pose in front of the camera, and the camera loves her. Here is a shot taken this spring by my aunt. Oh and another one I love. Here is one taken this summer by my cousin for her website punkbabyclothes.net Here is the school photo of Ella we just got back. I don't feel like I have to add a lot more, the photo speaks for itself. I was so happy with the pictures we got the last few years from preschool, who used our local photographers. They would look at the little screen, zoom in, make sure they got the shot. I can just tell from this photo they put the kids in an assembly line and snapped those pictures without even looking at them. Oh well, at least Ethan's picture turned out (and for those of you who have tried to take his picture you know getting a smile out of him while he is standing still is a virtual miracle!).