Family Pictures in Nauvoo

For our last trip of the summer, we drove almost 1000 miles to Nauvoo, IL to spend a weekend with my entire family.

With all of our traveling this summer, we were able to see every single person in Andy's and my immediate families, except for one brother-in-law.  Pretty amazing for families consisting of over 60 people, and spread all over the country, and even as far away as Korea.

We were definitely blessed.

BUT, it was a TON of driving for us!

My family hasn't all been together since Jennifer and Ryan were married almost 5 years ago.

AND we've added 7 more grandkids (with 2 currently on the way) to that last gathering.

So five years ago was our last Christensen family picture (my mom LOVES family pictures!), so of course we had to do another one since everyone would finally be together.

Unfortunately (for me and my sister, Jennifer) I was 7 months pregnant, and Jen was almost 5 months pregnant at the time.  So although we were thrilled to see everyone, we weren't so excited about be photographed in our current large-bellied states.  Especially since this picture would probably have to serve for the next 5 (or 10, or more) years.

So here I am, 7 months pregnant, ready to be remembered!

Well, we survived and the pictures went surprisingly well for a family of 10 adults and 11 kids.

We met in the Women's Garden at the Nauvoo Temple Visitor's center.

The day was perfect and sunny for the end of September.

In between taking pictures, the kids all had a marvelous time climbing all over the statues, and picking flowers.

 Silly little monkeys!

Even Grandpa and Grandma (aka Mark and Kaye) got in on the fun.

Cayden loved picking the berries of the trees.  We had to convince him not to eat them, or put them in his pockets, or throw them into the girls' hair.  Such a boy...

After we exhausted the scupture garden, we moved to a nearby barn.

Here the kiddos ran around in the grass and were entertained by a galloping horse just across the fence.

 My sweet kids, on top of a small water tower.  I was so happy they all cooperated.  Especially Ashton, for some reason she has issues with getting her picture taken.  It offends her sensibilities, or something...

How blessed we were to see each other again, and have professional, photographic evidence!