Not gonna lie. It isn’t easy getting the whole big family together for the “family shot”. It’s a lot of people needing to do the same thing at the same time.

There was a famous incident about fifteen years ago when all fourteen hundred of us grandkids were asked to give my grandma the “gift of our smiles” for Christmas. My grandma is everyone’s very favorite person in the entire world, but the photographer? She barked at us. Literally, barked. I mean canine. It took forever and we didn’t respond with smiles. Now it’s one of our favorite stories. Back then, we thought it was torture.

So, I’m left wondering why we still try to get everyone together year after year for “the shot”? It’s such a large number of people. The odds of sucess are against us, right? I found the answer in my grandma’s tiny t.v. room. Every year at Christmas, I hear her voicing her regret for not finishing her basement. “Everyone is squished into that tiny room” She’s right; there are about twenty two grandkids squished like sardines onto the plaid two seater couch. “Too many people in there.” She wasn’t havin’ it, she wanted everyone to have a little room to spread around. So she redecorated the sunroom, trying to draw some of the crowd into that space. No one noticed. Then she tried adding another flat screen in the living room. Still, no one budged.

Turns out she kept feeling bad that we were all crowded, while we actually  like to be crammed together in the smallest room in her house. We’re her family so we like to be close. Really close. Like, “Hey that’s my hand you’re stepping on” close, or “Will you watch it? I can’t see the GAME” close. It’s true that close doesn’t always give you alot of elbow room,  but, if your family is like my family, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

That must be why big families do it- take large group family pictures. We want to be able to see ourselves the way we are happiest. Together, in one big squishy group, like families are supposed to be.

And so you must be thinking the family in this picture must have been a difficult one to shoot?  On the contrary, this family brought their “A” game. They were so much fun. What then, made me think about all of this? It’s how incredibly, wonderfully, close they are. I just know their t.v. room has the same two seater couch, with not a spot to spare.

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