Family Pictures

Near the end of Janelle's extended stay, she felt well enough to help Tom and I try to take a few family pictures.  It's something I had been wanting to do for a while, so we headed back out to Oxbow Park.  Unfortunately Ann can be very uncooperative when it comes to things like this.  Back at Christmas when we took family pictures with Tom's whole family, we had a entourage of uncles and aunts, etc who were willing to act silly to distract Ann so she's hold still for a few seconds.  We'll try again when we next visit Tom's family and there are more helpers available :)  It was still fun to try though and there were a few pictures that I liked.

Since Ann didn't want to just be held, we tried to hold hands with her and try walking.  Ann is not a hand holder.  At all.  She will put up with it when we are crossing a street, but otherwise she rarely will let me just hold her hand while walking.  Here she is trying to pull her hand out of mine.  She wouldn't even let Tom get a hold of her other hand.

We tried to set up Tom's off-camera flash with this umbrella, but we forgot to check the batteries in the flash before coming.  The batteries were dead and we didn't have extras.  But Ann really wanted to play with the umbrella so we finally let her.

We figured we'd make the most it

This is our favorite one out of the bunch.

For some reason I didn't think we needed to bring Ann's stroller along (I don't know why), and she insisted that I carry her the whole time we walked along the trail (just me - we tried to switch and have Tom carry her but Ann wouldn't have it).

I sure love my big, grown up girl.  And when did my hair get to be so dark??  It used to be as light as Ann's once upon a time...