More Family Groupings

Rebekah, Derek, Naomi (David Henry) and Craig

Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. (Psalm 127)

Rebekah and I are thankful that our children are grown and happy. But it’s almost impossible to get even our small family all together. Sure, we managed 100% of Rebekah’s siblings at the South Carolina reunion, and nine of the ten grandchildren, but we really missed Andrew. Tuscany is a long, long way and when he does make it home Connecticut is still 1300 miles up the east coast.

But I did manage to photograph some most excellent family groupings. I’ll feature some of my favorites here along with some appropriate commentary.

all the nieces and nephews

One of the rarest imagesto capture is that of all ten grandchildren, and we didn’t quite make it in Santee. But I do really like this poor-quality cell-phone image I caught of Rebekah with her nieces and nephews. The big party (after church Sunday) had just broken up and I looked up to see all eight of them kind of swarmed around Rebekah. No time to get out the Nikon, but my phone was in my back pocket and you don’t set up something that awesome – you either capture it or you don’t. Sarah, Lindsay, Jared, Jordan, Seth, Rebekah, Reed, and then Micah (prone) and Faith in the front.

Roy, Rachel, Rebekah, Joe, Jesse

Family Dynamics: Every family has its own peculiar dance. The more children there are the more complex the choreography. That’s why this next photo is such a gem. Rebekah is the middle child of five, and they’re all ordained elders in the Presbyterian Church. That fact alone is a potential blog post in itself but I’ll let it pass.

We get together in twos and threes but seldom as a full set. The last time was Naomi’s wedding and nobody thought to photograph the whole handful.

Genealogy experts point out that most family lines disappear within just a few generations. We did some research and realized that both the Perkins (Rebekah’s mama’s maiden name) and the Alexander strains are in the hands of the youngest child. Both are named Jesse, and they were born just a day apart.

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  The Jesse's and their boys!
  Jesse Alexander is the youngest of five Alexander siblings, and he has the only boys – Seth and Jared – who carry the Alexander name.
• Jesse Perkins is the youngest of four Perkins siblings. and his boys – Cameron and Dawson (Spellings?) – are the only candidates to carry the Perkins name.

So I thought that would be a photo for the ages.

I shot a lot of cool combinations, and I’ve included a few more in this slide show. No matter how you line them up, family are irreplaceable.

… Now if we can just get that photo with Derek, Rebekah, Andrew, Naomi and Craig….