Family...isn't it about...Time? (by Heather)

We had SO much fun last weekend. Our boys had Friday off, so we took advantage of that and drove about 3.5 hours from our home in Ohio, to my older sister (and I don't mean "OLDER" Sarah...you look 20 and act 18....is that what I was supposed to say?) Sarah's house in wild, wonderful, West Virginia. We grew up in West Virginia and there is still something so magical about it for me. I've been back there once with my husband and kids a couple years ago, showing off the houses I grew up in, the schools I have so many memories in, our old church, the old ice rink, etc. As we drove around my husband commented a few times how my beloved West Virginia looked very much like…a third world country. 

What?! 

Some people just don't appreciate the beauty of the hollers and people stirring a big, black pot in their front yard near my old home, the run down stores that we used to buy candy from THE INSTANT we had any money. There's just a special connection for a person to the place they grew up in and have so many great memories of - something that's hard to explain to someone else and to get them to appreciate for how amazing it is.

But THIS trip, I took my husband and kids (and Sarah and her family and Bethany and her family) to a place that no person on this earth could argue its beauty - especially at THIS time of year with the Fall leaves. It's a park called Cooper's Rock. 

Sarah is an amazing photographer (though she's too modest to admit it) and agreed to take our family pictures there. Even though she knew what she was getting into lots of, "…get your hand down!" "…look at Aunt Sarah." "…don't squint!" "…stop picking your nose!" Oh, and "everyone….SMILE!!!"  Can you imagine how different of an experience a family picture would be if everyone just looked at the camera and smiled the first time…or the second time…or the tenth time?! We would have years of our lives back! But Sarah is such a good sport and somehow managed to get some good ones of us (as she always does for family pictures, weddings, senior pictures, and on and on - the girl's amazing!)

Thank you Sarah for hosting an amazing weekend and taking a trillion pictures of our family in hopes that we would have at least one picture where everyone is looking...realistically it's too much to hope for to have one where everyone is looking AND smiling. But maybe it's better to have a picture where not everyone is smiling…because then you remember what life was REALLY like! Maybe someday that's what I'll blow up and put on my wall, one where the kids are not looking anywhere near the camera and Austin and I are in the process of yelling at the kids to look and smile. A snapshot of real life. Wonder what visitors would say about that one...

In the end, somehow Sarah pulled off a bunch of great pictures to remember this time of our lives and the amazing and magical place where the picture was taken. Country roads, take me home!