Our Vague and Puzzling Family History
We are terrible at taking pictures. Terrible. And there's no excuse since my iPhone is with me at all times.
Larissa's teachers asked that we send in a family picture for their class book and I didn't have a single current photo (read: within the last 6 months) where all seven of us were all together. It's like we're Yetis or something. I found several photos of all five kids, so I figured I'd just send one of the children and a separate one of me and Rob. Say "hello" to Mr. & Mrs. Loch Ness Monster. Nothing. The most current photo of us is from a summer carnival we went to two years ago. Knock on wood that none of us ever goes missing since I'm pretty sure it's hard to identify people based upon photos of them that are decades old.
I finally located a terrible photo of all of us taken in a very dimly lit Olive Garden the night of my birthday (in June). Larissa? Sorry that your family photo looks like one of those miserable Civil-War era ones. Enjoy all the awesome photos of your classmates in matching outfits on the beach. When we are all much older I hope that between the seven of us we'll be able to recall one or two clear memories of our family history because few photos exist - and the ones that do have very little context in them to explain where we were or what we were doing.
Case in point: Rob and I took the little kids to the Johnny Appleseed festival which takes place in our town every September. It was a gorgeous day, there were tons of fun activities and the four of us had a great time....which you would never know - because I only took THREE PHOTOS. And here they are.
PHOTO #1:
A blurry picture of a cicada!
The first thing the kids and Rob noticed when we got downtown was this newly hatched cicada crawling on a tree that was covered in the shed exoskeletons of his comrades. I spent 10 minutes trying to take a photo of it (obvious fail) but took not a single photo of the kids looking at said cicada. However....Larissa just walked by, saw this photo on my computer and exclaimed, "Hey! It's that bug we saw at the Johnny Appleseed Festival!" so I guess I'll have to be happy with associative memories, huh?
Photo #2:
A new "educational" toy store opened in our little downtown and is rumored to be owned by one of the teachers at my kids' elementary school...which makes this sign all the more unfortunate.
I took this photo while I was standing in the hot sun in an interminably long line for balloon animals. No one really wants photos of a sweaty clown with their kids anyway.
PHOTO #3:
Hey! It's a photo of Kellan and Larissa standing in front our downtown sign!
Right before we headed back to our car I said something to the effect of, "Crap! We didn't take a single photo!" so I hustled the kids in front of the city sign (and its glorified ad for Home State Bank). The kids are looking in Rob's direction because he kept saying, "Smile!" and "Say cheese!" even though I was the one with the camera.
Thanks to my Pulitzer-level journalistic coverage, I'll bet it feels like you were actually there.