Yes, I bought all of the school pictures, and I'll probably do it again

I'm a huge sucker for school pictures. I'm sure those people can see me coming a mile away and just start rubbing their hands together and thinking "Let's see, a sitting pose of the first kid, a standing pose of her, one of each of those for the second kid (I have no delusions that they can tell the girls apart), one of the two sitting together, one of the two standing together, a close-up of them together, wallets of everything, and uh, we'll just make up a few more combos as we go along. She'll buy them all, mwah ha ha!" Yes, I buy them all. And no, it's not like we don't have any other pictures of the girls... Oh well, here are the girls in their school pictures, on their first day of big-girl preschool. (Oh man, I just know Catherine is going to squeal on me here, so I'd better confess right now. Actually the portraits were taken on Ro and Ree's second day of big-girl preschool. It's just that I picked out these awesome, fun outfits for the first day of school. And then, when Catherine and I were dropping the girls off, we saw the notice about pictures the next day—so I dressed them in the exact same thing again the next day. Fine, now the whole world knows the truth.) The girls are looking a little rough in these shots, no one brushed their hair beforehand so it's a little stringy, I can tell by Ro's disheveled hair flower that she's been in a skirmish (probably, hopefully, with her sister), and the picture quality isn't that great (even before we scanned them in). But they're pretty true-to-life pictures of how the girls look about 15 minutes into any preschool day, and I love them. If the pictures had been taken an hour or two into preschool, by the way, you'd have seen the girls splattered with food, paint, mud, or water, and they'd have been minus their cute hair accessories (which would have been ripped out and discarded somewhere in the playyard). I don't even know how many hundreds of times I've picked them up from school and said "Well girls, it looks like you've been through a war, so I'm guessing you had a fun day." * Note: By the time you read this, TubaDad and I will be on a flight to Cancun, and my folks will be a few hours into their twinsitting adventure, which started with a visit to the pediatrician's this morning since Ro has a bad cold with a sore ear. Nothing like starting out with a bang, huh? I pre-wrote this post a couple of days ago and queued it up so my mom would have something to read late tonight. Lord knows she's not going to have any time to read during the day. Please cross your fingers for my folks and send them good thoughts for nice, calm, happy, healthy three-year-olds, ok? If they email me any pictures and/or updates I'll post them...