the 86ers

Back in the summer of 1986 there was much excitement on my maternal side of the family.

In that summer there were three girls born.

My dear Rachel was born June 19.
Angela Nicole was born July 10.
I was born August 17.

 Nicole, myself, and Rachel.

Now, my mother is one of nine children.  And it just so happend that six of those nine children were married and started having children within five years of one another.  Growing up I never really thought about the fact that there were so many of us.  It was just a guarantee you could find someone to play with at family gatherings - for me it was always Rachel.

Seriously, there must have been toddlers everywhere!  The barefoot girl with the wild hair in the top left would be me, Rachel - looking quite proper - is the blonde in the pink, Sam is talking to us in the yellow shirt, Aaron is looking at the camera, Joel is exiting the Mississippi and Joanna is just dipping her feet in.  Not in the frame would have been Jason, George, Stephen, babies Julie, Laura, and Josiah - that was only four families.

Most of my mother's family has lived in northern Indiana during my lifetime.  A few cousins lived far away.  Nicole was one of them.  She and her sister, Sandra, lived in Texas.  Whenever they came to town there was always family gatherings to celebrate - and always, always photos.

 Rachel, myself, and Nicole in Middlebury rocking bangs.  I think it was about age 5.

 Here we are at our Uncle's wedding (he was the baby of the family).  This was about age 14.

 We snapped this after an evening of celebrating at Nicole's sister's wedding.  We were 19.

Nicole and I were able to kick up our heels at Samuel's wedding.  It was so much fun to spend time with her.  We did some good chatting about food, browsing the natural food store for vegan snacks, and discussing what we want to do now that we are grown up.

 Our dear Rachel had a beautiful reason for not being in this photo...and her name is Eurydice May.  

Eury came on May 31st, just one day before her due date, and we were all happy to have even more reason to celebrate at the wedding.  Well, actually she arrived just as we were sitting down to the rehearsal dinner and when the photo of her beeped into my messages everyone around me had to deal with my squeals and me shoving my phone in their faces.  It's not so often that a family gets two new members in one weekend!

Now Rachel and Joshua are having their very own girl summer.