Catch up, catch up part 2.

I never wrote about taking our family pictures.  We ended up going downtown and taking them in front of a famous Austin mural.  The weather cooperated beautifully.  I picked up Ben and one of his co-workers who volunteered to snap the pictures for us.  Noon is usually NOT a great time to take pictures, especially in a south-facing location.  Bright overhead sun is pretty disastrous in terms of lighting conditions.  But that morning it was overcast, and it didn't completely burn off until just after we took our pictures.  Yay!  It was a good thing, because there was NO other time we could have taken those pictures, so a re-shoot wasn't an option.  The boys are so good about doing pictures now.  They were cooperative and helpful and I didn't have to bribe them or anything!  The one adventure was in getting Ben's shirt.  All of us wore different colored long-sleeved t-shirts for this picture, and Ben's only long-sleeved t-shirt had recently been ruined in all of the water-main repair stuff from the week before.  So on the way to pick up Ben we stopped off at Target.  Not the usual one I go to.  First of all, the parking was terrible.  Why were there so may people there on a Thursday morning?  So I had to park far away and walk.  Second of all, there were NO ride on carts.  Not one.  Unacceptable, I tell you!  So I had to keep walking.  Third, the men's section was way in the very back of the store. So I had to keep walking all the way to the back, meanwhile knowing that Ben's lunch hour was approaching and I needed to be on time.  Finally I found a shirt that would work (at least Target didn't fail me there), and walked all the way back up to the front of the store to pay for it, and then all the way back out to the van after that.  Lot's of walking!  A lot more than I usually do.  By the time we got to the picture location, my legs were pretty much done.  Ben had to carry me from the car over to where I set up the camera, then over to where we took the pictures (where I at least had a wall to lean against), and then back to the car again when we were done.  Workout for Ben!
It was all worth it, though, because we got great pictures.  And Ben's co-worker got treated to a super-fancy meal at Jason's Deli.  :-)