nice...um, tentacles.

Time spent with my family is crazy. In the best possible way. I come from a family of eight strong-willed, hot-tempered, and well, let's just come out and say it: opinionated people. I'm second, but there are ten years between my older brother and I, which effectively places me as a "oldest child" when it comes to birth order. I'm often the one trying to facilitate things like family movies, game night...and family photos.

Getting a family photo has proven very nearly IMPOSSIBLE over the years, with my older brother off in California and my youngest brother developing a very strong aversion to being photographed. Drives my poor mother crazy. So over Thanksgiving I determined that we would at least take a photo with all the family members present. Thanksgiving day would be the logical time to do so, I thought, since everyone would be dressed up. Well, various sibling threw temper-tantrums on various days until Sunday (the very last day we'd all be there) rolled around. We manage to all gather in the living room, and I set up the camera. My sister drags the extremely antisocial cat onto her lap, making my Mom and youngest brother upset that she is being mean to the cat. I tell her to let the cat go, she refuses, and I take a picture to see if everyone is lined up right.

Photo 1: Everyone but me. No one paying attention. Emily looking morbidly happy and is cuddling up to the cat, who looks as though it is counting down the hours until night when it can wake us all up with the disgusting noise of a cat hairball coming out.

I ask Emily to switch places with Nathan because her head is blocking his. She hears, "Emily, please move to the back so that your MONSTROUSLY ENORMOUS head will not dominate the whole photo," and gets offended.

photos 2-5: Elijah (the youngest child) thinks that this whole ordeal is funny, and makes faces in every photo. On threat of death, he decides to stop doing this.

photos 6-11: Nathan starts using his (superior) camera, but trips over the table and knocks the camera off-center EVERY TIME he sets the timer button.

photos 12-22: apparently the setting on the camera is waaaaaaaaay too long, because nobody can manage not to either 1. talk, or 2. turn his or her head.

photos 23-33: combined with the problems listed in photos 12-22, Elijah seems to blink at the exact moment the photo is taken, despite the camera's high-tech red eye/blinking protective flash.

after taking over 30 photos, we give up without a single decent family photo. And Elijah described my bangs as, "tentacles hanging in my face." He claims he didn't know what they were called.

Happy Thanksgiving Family!