Family Picture

Saturday I spent the entire afternoon in a mall in Waldorf, Marylad getting a family portrait done at the JC Penney photo studio. Everything went Okay... except for the traffic on the way down. It was horrendous, on Route 301 nobody was moving, and if they were it was probably at an average speed of 3 mph. Ugh! And our family from Southern Maryland complains about the traffic in Montgomery County?! Please! That drive that should have taken about 45 minutes to an hour took an hour and a half.
We were the last ones to get to Penneys for the picture my Grandma has been wishing and wishing for: all FOURTEEN of us (2 grandparents, their 3 daughters, their 3 spouses and SIX grandbabies including me!). After the formal shot, we did a picture of all 14 of us again but wearing sunglasses and making faces. My biker aunt insisted on this goofy one. Then we split up into different group and took more pictures - one of each of the 3 families, one of just the 6 grandchildren, one of the grandparents, and one of the three moms/sisters. Yea... lots of pictures! Now you have to keep in mind how... very different my family is from each other. Personality-wise and physically. We've got a cast of characters. For example my aunts are both 6 feet tall but their sister (my mom) is only 5'3".  The 6 grandchildren are very different. We range in age from 2 to 21. Two are high school graduates, one is a Junior, I am a sophomore, and then we have a third grader and a toddler in his terrible twos! It was So difficult to make him hold still for a nanosecond for even one picture. We've got red heads, brunettes and blonds. We've got Harley bike club members, ambulance drivers, retired Navy, a teacher, an airplane mechanic a technowizard and a professional nurse. I have to tell you that my parents and I were the only liberals in the picture. Wait why did politics come into this? Only because politics ALWAYS comes up with this group of highly opinionated people. But we love each other VERY much and I'm glad that we have the pictures to show for this long afternoon of sitting and waiting. It was worth it.