These people

It's been a busy couple of weeks, and part of that is because we have had good friends in town. (If you're new here, I suggest reading about the families who are our exceptionally good friends first, or none of this will make very much sense. The Beginning of the Goodbyes ) There is also another family, the W family, who had joined us in the past few years. It makes me both happy and sad to be given more time with these people.

First, the children.

It all started with this photo, this habit of lining our children up in age order and taking their picture. (G. and L. are infants here.)

So we kept doing it whenever we had nearly everyone together, which became increasingly difficult. This one was missing the oldest child, our two newest, but also included a couple of spouses.

So, of course when we were all together Monday night, for the last time in a while, we had to take another one. This time, it has the children from all four families, but since we have 30 children between us, we were missing all the adults, plus a 11yo boy who was at camp. We started out with height order for a change. Notice how well my youngests, there on the end, were enjoying the process.

Then we did our traditional age order. Pretend you see my youngests there on the far left. They were done, done, done. (You could also imagine 11 more children, plus four spouses if you wanted as well.)

This time was different, though, in that our children decided that we needed to take one of the adults, too.

We did by height as well, to humor them. We did not do age order.

I love these people, and I miss them every. single. day.