Mommy & Me Photoshoot (and Living Social sucks)

Audrey and I did a little "Mommy & Me" photoshoot about 2 weeks ago and it was sadly a total FAIL.  I wanted to get some cute shots of just the two of us since we have hardly any and I'm not counting all those disgusting cringe-worthy post-birth ones that the hubs posted on Facebook without my knowledge for the whole world to see which I discovered about 3 months after the fact.  Awesome.

Anyway, I got a $10 Groupon for one of those mall studio places and it was horrible.  We've gone the mall route before and it's been fine but the photographer at this place was clueless and Audrey wasn't exactly on her best behavior either.  The photographer kept giving her very specific instructions like, "now sit down and cross your legs at the ankle," apparently not realizing that 21-month olds barely speak English, let alone follow directions of any sort.  She also kept calling Audrey "lil' mama" which was just weird.  For her part, Audrey did a lot of screaming, running around, and spinning herself dizzy until she almost puked on the backdrop so we called it a day.  Here are the whopping FOUR pictures we ended up with:

 

And only one of those was included in the Groupon so I had to shell out more money to get the other 3.  Oh, and the reason I wrote that Living Social sucks is because this whole thing came about because of a botched Living Social deal I got back in January.  It was my first Living Social purchase and I forked over fairly big bucks for a 1-hour outdoor photoshoot one-on-one with a photographer that included a DVD of all the images.  Sounds great, right?  Fastforward to April after I spent 2 months trying to get said photographer to return my phone calls and emails so that I could book the shoot and I finally complained to Living Social.  Not only were they zero help in getting the issue resolved, they told me only the photographer himself could refund my money (um, okay, because he won't even answer his phone...) and after much back and forth they finally agreed only to give me a credit toward future Living Social purchases.  Because, you know, I can't wait to go buy more Living Social deals after this awesome experience.  So I'm still out the money and I never got the photoshoot I pre-paid.  Anyway, this $10 Groupon was my sad consolation prize to myself for the photoshoot that never was, sniffle, sniffle. 

On a brighter note, after not having a camera for nearly a year I think we're finally getting one of those nice, semi-fancy big black tourist-y ones this week.  It's used, but I'm still excited.  Now let's hope I'm not too dumb to figure the thing out :P