Family Pictures: The Selfies

We'll start with Phoebe, who was so pleased to be sitting on a wall

Family Pictures: The Groupies

This was, I believe, one of the first pictures we took and...almost unbelievably...it worked out! It's not centered, but it worked out!

We're here to burgle your turts

When Josie was out here, Rachel, Miriam, and I watched Over the Garden Wall with her. It's a quirky little cartoon, but it has many layers to analyze...like an onion...or Dante's Inferno (which it is often compared to). It follows the whimsical journey of a pair of brothers—ages 5 and 15 (or so)—as they try to find their way home. The music is quizzically delightful. And it's just something that you watch and think, "Huh..." because it seems so simple and yet leaves you thinking long after the episode is over. 

So after Auntie Josie left, the girls convinced Andrew that he needed to watch it as well. They weren't sure he would like it because...it's a little weird...but he loved it. We now own the soundtrack (so we can listen to "Miss Langtree's Lament" as many times as we want to without Alexa yelling at us about needing to buy it) and Miriam has been leaning to play "Potatoes and Molasses" on the piano.

One of our favourite lines from the show is "We're here to burgle your turts!" which I won't explain. Because you should just watch the show to find out what it means. 

Just know that that line is what came to mind when we found this little turt(le) crawling by the pond. 

I think these pictures of Zoë and Benjamin with their little turtle friend are darling. I'm so glad we captured this moment of the sun sinking low, casting a golden light on these sweet children bonding with this pond creature (who I'm sure was more than happy to be released again when they were through).

Family Pictures 2021

Our 16th anniversary was on Thursday—as my mom's cousin Lori pointed out it was our 16th anniversary on the 16th! We spent the evening getting our temple recommends interviewed. The stake center is a 45 minute drive from our house so it was quite the excursion. We took Phoebe with us and left the kids at home to fend for themselves; Rachel made pancakes (some with chocolate chips, some with blueberries) for dinner and then they settled in to watch Rudolph.

It's so nice to have older children!

We ordered Mexican food for ourselves, which arrived home just five minutes after we did. 

And that's about all the celebrating we could muster this year.

We also decided when we'd take our family pictures.

Outtakes

At first we were going to take family pictures on Saturday but then we decided we wouldn't because we hadn't decided on a location or a wardrobe or anything and we were running out of time to make such suggestions. But then Rachel suggested that we take family photos at the salt flats and this Saturday was the only date available for such an outing for quite some time so we decided we'd go for it. 

The idea was one part brilliant and one part messy, messy, messy. 

It was quite the adventure, that's for sure!

Family Pictures 2014

One year to the day from the last time I dragged my family out into the wild for family pictures...I did it again. We didn't manage to leave the house until 2:30 PM, but this time I double checked to make sure Historic Stagville was open (because it was closed last year (even though I checked to make sure it was open)) so we didn't have to find an alternative location at the last minute.

Things turned out pretty well.