Good Family Pictures (Thanks, Dad.)

I was wrong. There IS something worth writing about. Here goes.

I am a lazy person, very lazy. More so than lazy I am selfish and stubborn. Oftentimes I dread doing something, not because it's going to be awful in the least, but because I just don't want to do it. Silly things, like voice rehearsals, class, grocery shopping etc. Stupid things I shouldn't fret about. Nh called me quite a while ago and asked when would be a good time for me to participate in the taking of family pictures with her, dad and the boys. The date, though changed once or twice, ended up being this past Friday. Family pictures were to be taken atop a mountain about 45 minutes away. I must admit, I was not very keen on the idea of driving up a winding road for 45 minutes in the back of my Dad's van to take family pictures for three hours. << This is me being stupid, because I ALWAYS have a good time with my family, I must just forget every time I leave them.

Anyway- to the good part. C is my aunt. C is a brilliant photographer (click the link to check her site). She often photographs the smaller families within my larger family (does that make sense?). Aunt C and Uncle E drove in front of us up the mountain, (Uncle E acts as her assistant, apparently). Upon arriving at the green, tree filled part of the mountain we exited the van, and stood at the side of the road awaiting our direction. To be clear these are the models: Km17(me, duh), Dad, Nh, Wg3, and Dg5. Here we are, semi-matching at the side of a road lined on either side with beautiful trees. C took a couple of pictures of us all holding hands walking down the road (so cute). Uncle E stood further down the road and yelled, "CAR" every time he heard a vehicle coming towards us. What a good guy.

That's not the juicy part, though. You see, none of us are really dressed to "hike". I have on open-backed shoes, Nh has on some dress shoes, and all of the boys are in nice dress shirts. C surveys an area off the side of the road and into the woods, taking us with her. She looks around for a moment, looks at us, and points to 4 trees sitting on the top of a VERY steep hill. "Go up there", she says. ... Uh, say what Aunt C? I don't think she realized the severity of the slope here. It took Dad and Nh about 10 minutes to get the little ones up, slipping down a foot for every two they climbed. I thought I would be a genius and try a different way up- really I just made things exponentially more difficult for myself. With the help of Uncle E, I was safely on top of this wretched cliff/mountain/hill with my family. A few pictures of this scariness (scariness because the flat part [the SAFE part] wasn't too large on top of this cliff/mountain/hill), Uncle E points to a log. This log is very long, and very large. It is lodged in some dirt crossing a ravine. It's a good 20 feet off the ground. "Stand on that" Aunt C says. Crap, what? And again, my family is risking their lives for artsy pictures. Wg3 and Dg5 are frightened. Dad compromises with C and sits the boys on the log- it's too high up to stand, too scary, too dangerous. I somehow sit myself on the log as well (again, taking a long ridiculously difficult route thinking it'd be faster/easier etc.). I sat down next to Wg3 and he requested in a little bit of a panic that I hold his hand. Gladly, I did this. We spent some time up on that log, but in reality spent more time attempting to get on and off of it.

On the way down, we traipsed through a deeply cut ravine that went on forEVER. We were not that far from the road, but all of the little white rocks lining the bottom of this crevasse made it difficult to keep one's balance. Nh and I came through the ravine almost side by side. Both struggling to place our feet strategically on what seemed to be stable rocks, preferably the larger ones. My father, bless his heart, picks up this huge stick. When I say huge I mean LONG. About six inches wide and, hm, I don't know, SEVENTY FEET LONG, and he lifts it up. "I'm moving it out of our way", he says... because the stick ran directly down the middle of our path. We could have easily worked around it- it was doing us no harm, nor was it creating any REAL obstacle. I quickly concluded that Dad just wanted to pick up a big stick (what a boy) because he lifted it up and dropped it vertically back down... exactly where it was before, only further down the path. Interesting, right? Immediately after, Dg5 picks up a large stick and begins to do the same thing. 3 adults, almost at once, tell him to put it down. Uncle E says, "Monkey see, monkey do" and Nh and I laugh in agreement.

I always have a good time with them, and I always enjoy having them around, or rather, them having me around. I think about the four of them every day, and think to myself, "I must change my lazy, stupid, college kid ways, call them up, and hang out."

I will post any pictures I can here... you must see the final product to understand just exactly what we were willing to do for good family pictures.