Paralyzed with JOY!: Family time

I come from a large family, and my four of my six sisters live hundreds of miles away, so it's hard for us to all be in the same place at the same time. It's actually never happened, since my family has grown so much over recent years as babies have been born and brothers-in-law have been added to our family. Last summer my mom thought it was time for us to have our first family reunion with everyone, so she set our reunion date for Memorial Day weekend 2011.

I've been eagerly anticipating this weekend for months and months, but a few weeks ago our reunion plans were deflated a bit when I found out that my sister Kristin and her family wouldn't be able to make it. Kristin lives in California and she thought it would just be too expensive for her family to make the trip since her husband is recently out of grad school and has loans to pay back. It would also be expensive with the price of gas, in addition to having to get four hotel rooms on the drive up and back since it's around 30 hours one way from California to St. Louis. I was devastated because I miss Kristin and her family SO MUCH (they lived with my mom and me for five months last year while Kristin's husband was looking for a job, and I grew very attached to having Kristin and her family around during that time).

As disappointed as I was to not have my ENTIRE family at the reunion, it was lots of fun and I really enjoyed seeing my nieces and nephews since they change so quickly. One of the "musts" was to get a family picture with all of us who were at the reunion. Getting a picture of 23 people is easier said than done, especially when 12 of those people are young children, but we did our best. We were able to get some pictures that were acceptable, although I wasn't completely satisfied since the lighting wasn't as good as I would've hoped, and there also wasn't one picture where everyone was looking at the camera and smiling. Here are a few of the best ones: