When my parents visited over Thanksgiving, my mom brought our family Christmas card photo from 1994. I love the overt color coordination, and that it's obvious Sam and Will (the two on the left) were getting along that day. We were in southern Arkansas, attending private Catholic school, and about to move to England. I had just grown out bangs, and was still trying to brush out my curls.
In 1998, we were just ending another summer in Michigan (behind us is the cabin my parents demolished to build their dream cabin!). We had just moved from one southwestern English town to another, and unbeknownst to us, were about to move back to the States. Joe (on my lap) was clearly a bit crabby that day - and I had totally embraced my curly-girl mane (plus - I'm pretty sure I'm rocking some JNCOs).
In 2010, I had just moved across the country to North Carolina, and have been rocking super-short hair for awhile. My brothers were also starting to spread out across the country - one is in Illinois, one in Michigan, and one in Connecticut. Joe is clearly so over it here, and the rest of us are ubiquitously showboating (or tipsy).
As it should be obvious by now, logistics were always an issue. At least one kid was always in a bad mood, or messing with another kid, or in an awkward life stage (or tipsy). We were always right about to leave the cabin, or in the middle of a move. And these days, we are only ever all together at Christmas, and hopefully during the summer - so timing can be tricky. But it's fun to look back and see how far we've come, yet how much we've all stayed the same.