Family Picture and Reunion

At the wedding, Rainman decided that we were going to get a family picture.  He is big on sending family pictures out in Christmas cards.  I prefer sending out pictures with just the kids.  But, here we were all dressed up....so, I agreed....somewhat reluctantly....and for totally selfish reasons...

Before I show the picture to you, I would like to give you a little insight into what I was thinking. 

First of all, I do not like the size I have become (mostly since moving to Georgia - but I wasn't exactly slim back in Minnesota either).  So, I thought ...I will be in the back....I've got 6 kids....they can be in the front and they will sort of block a lot of my, shall we say...bulk? 

Good plan, right? 

Except for one teeny, tiny detail....

the camera angle.

Apparently, I should have planted myself at the front of the pack and let my bulk show - because then I could have looked up at the camera - thus defeating the dreaded double chin. Oh well, maybe next time!

The picture was being taken from below me...so, thus, the double chin...and because of aforementioned "bulk", I took up too much space for the kids to sort of gather in and hide me as I had envisioned!  But look at how beautiful all my kids and Rainman are.....sigh....oh, and on another note, my hair seems to be red now...not blonde...not sure when that happened....but here is proof.  Now all the comments I have been getting from people asking me where the kids got all their blond hair from makes sense!  My dental hygenist even picked me an orange toothbrush to go with my "red" hair last week. 

We tried to take stair step pictures of the kids - but that also didn't exactly go as I envisioned it....they were moving from "their" step....or not looking....and D-man insisted on doing his smirky smile thing in all of them.....so here is the best of them...

This next picture is only for my dad.....so, just move along if you are bored.

Dad, do you think A-man has an engineering mind too?

We saw the bride and groom the next day very briefly at the hotel.

They didn't come to the reunion....for, I guess, obvious reasons.  We missed them though!  Note the smirky smile on D-man's face yet again!  And, now, A-man seems to be doing it too!

I am going to include the reunion in this post because upon further review, I took a total of about 7 pictures of the actual reunion....so, here goes:  We stayed at some cabins in Patoka Lake, Indiana.  They were really nice.....they were less fancy than some of our other recent reunions....and I liked that.  They were comfortable and clean.  I liked that they had porches...the fire pit was right off the porch.  Honestly, I probably liked this place so much because it reminded me of Minnesota.  The only thing I would have liked better is if our cabins were closer to each other....we had 3 cabins for the family - but none right near each other.  The weather was good.  No real family fights erupted - that I know of anyway.  On a side note:  I love Rainman's family!

L-girl won the Most Valuable Player trophy in the family whiffle ball game....she deserved it too....she pitched, she hit, she made some great defensive plays to get people out and she ran lightning quick when she was on base!

This is her, the morning after, when her mother realized that she hadn't taken any pictures and this was the last day of the reunion.  This trophy has been in our house for a few years now....A-girl won it last year!

Anybody know what this is?

This was right above V-girls' head in the last shot.  (Jenners, is this what you saw too?)

We got a few shots with the remaining kids...

Then the grown ups figured out that we would all be headed in the same direction for a bit of our road trip - so instead of saying goodbye here, we piled into our vans....and saw a few things with them before parting ways.

V-girl is holding and early birthday gift from her Godparents - a Dora Talking Microphone.  Ask D-man what he thinks about Dora's Talking Microphone after having an assigned seat next to V-girl for this last leg of our trip!  Hee....hee....

So, up next...Road Trip....