This, is us.
I like this picture, it has captured the our essence.
Though it's pictures like this that would realy benefit from sounds and smells. It really is noisy at gatherings like this. Unbelievably so. Especially as this isn't all of the family, oh no, only a few of us have houses with enough squish room for that, this is only one strain of us. No to realy get the full effect of this picture you need to be hearing clattering cuttlery, argueing, the smoke alarm going off at periodic intervals accompnied by much flapping about with the tea towel, lots and lots of laughter, giggling and general joviality, teasing about everything, incessant offering of food, the mmmmmmmm noise that the 2 year old makes whenever she's eating something nice, background music and in one corner of the table my nephew is quietly cooing as he recieves a running commentry and explanation of what's going on.
I marvel at how big he's become. He's trippled his birth weight in under just 4 months. I think someone's producing super milk!
But back to the main event, the food:
Roast beef, roast pork, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, stuffing with sausage meat, stuffing without sausage meat (for tehe veggie), mashed potato, cabbage and leeks, cauliflower cheese, cauliflower and brocolli cheese, carrots, mushy peas (throw back from Pappi's meals - now totally essential), gravy and sprouts.
Yes sprouts. Deemed totally gratuitous by some and utterly essential by others. Mine found my way on to my sister's more appriciative plate next to mine.
I love the family pictures that come from such occasions, I know that we'll look back at them in the future, when the children and babies are fully grown with children and babies of their own and we'll remember the fun and laughter and food, just as we do now of the times gone by from when we were young.
I'm so intrigued to see how my nephew grows, I can't imagine him at 5, let alone 10, yet it seems like only yesterday that I was cuddling the two above when they were new born.
And once again it's the often unseen things that stick in my mind, and that I choose to leave on:
the total detritus of toys left behind by the children
the boy making her laugh like no one else.
the two year old deicding to sleep on the floor,
and finally the shortcust pastry substitute for play-doh.
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