The One With the Waters Family Vacation

Last weekend we headed to the coast with Steve's family for a little vacation. We also had the brilliant idea of taking a family picture. Brilliant might not be the best description of our idea for the following reasons: a) we had five babies under two years old to try and have dressed, fed and awake, b) not everyone was there (sorry, Val), or c) some people had to leave early (Kev) and d) everyone was supposed to be ready by ten to take the pictures but there were only two bathrooms and ten adults and five kids. So yeah, we might not have thought that one all the way through. But we did come away with this picture:

It's Christmas card worthy, I suppose. But babies were falling asleep or extremely cranky and it was high noon by the time we shot this... so yeah.. think blindingly bright and screamy (per the babies). O yeah, and I don't have a tripod for my camera so I used a telescope tripod and secured my camera to it with hair ties. I'm awesome like that.

Anyway, there were some other good things that happened...

The babies loved the sand.

I love this picture. This captures exactly how Cyril walks around all the time. And I love
the sand flying out of his crocs.

And the dads (and grandpa) carried the cranky babies to the beach for picture time the next day.

And I squeezed in a few individual family portraits on that very bright day (hence all the squinting).

So the lesson here is: if you're going to take family pictures make sure you are staying in a place with enough bathrooms that everyone can get ready on time. Then the babies will still be happy at picture time. Also, avoid taking pictures when it is so bright no one can look at the camera. :-)