The Money Shot

This is my big, wacky family. My mom has been wanting a family photo for years. The last one we had taken was about 15 years ago. That was 4 marriages and 3 divorces ago, and who knows how many grandkids.

This day, July 26, 2014, had been reserved for over a year to get everyone together. One nephew just got home from his mission in April, another nephew is leaving for his mission in a couple of weeks, and my brother was able to drive down from Seattle for 36 whole hours to make this picture happen. From here on out, it's going to be missions and weddings and changes galore, so the fact that this moment in time was documented is pretty neat. The fact that we're all color-coordinated is a major bonus.

Oh man, we drive each other nuts. But we love each other.

Weeping, wailing, and mild dehydration

 On the 4th of July, I woke up determined to do something adventurous. I declared that we would go on a hike to Stewart Falls. How wondrous, to spend America's birthday as a family, enjoying its natural bounty.

We thought it would be extra patriotic to take the dog. What's more American than hiking with a dog? To keep the story concise, it was 12,000 degrees that day in the mountains and there were 12,000 other people hiking to Stewart Falls with dogs. Friggin' patriots.

Much or most of the trail to the falls is single-file, so trying to walk hand-in-hand with the children, as I had so tenderly imagined, was an impossibility. We often had to pull over and let other hikers and their dogs pass us on their way back.

There are also 45,000,000 (I counted) exposed tree roots sticking out of the ground, just waiting for you to trip over. We did that a lot. All of the girls face-planted more than once. Also, the trail was amazingly dusty. We were all completely filthy. Our white dog was brown shortly after beginning. Our white dog was also a total wuss and had to be carried a lot. Pansy.

Anyway, there was copious amounts of whining from all of the children. They were talking about being tortured, and "on a scale from 1 to 10, how horrible do you think this is?" and that sort of nonsense. In their defense, the conditions were rough, and the hike is about 4 miles round trip, which takes a really, really long time with 4 whiners and a wimpy dog. We kept bribing them with gas station slushies if we could just get to the end. We made it about a week later. Just kidding. It took about 3 hours. THREE HOURS OF WHINING.

We tried! God Bless America!

See how pretty?

See how dirty?

Aah, filth.

Wow. She totally looks like an orphan, with the missing tooth and all.