Holiday Cards and Parental Sacrifices

We're back from our most-likely-once-in-a-lifetime vacation to Cancun.  It was awesome.  Everything I had hoped for and more.  On our return flight home, the pilot mentioned several times, "Welcome back to reality."  

Yep, we're back.

I'll have to share Cancun memories another day.  Or two.  Or three.  Spread them out so as to enjoy the reliving of them.  But for now, I am smack-dab in the middle of 

laundry (still... for the third day)

Christmas clean-up (not the take-down kind... that will have to wait)

entertaining (Britt's boyfriend is visiting... but I'm really not entertaining him, poor guy... he's fending for himself, like everybody else around here)

college packing (okay, we haven't started that yet... maybe today?)

general catching up (especially in the scheduling department)

and holiday card sending.

Ah, yes.  The holiday cards.  I would call them Christmas cards, had I sent them prior to Christmas.  They are actually New Year's cards.  I had planned all along to send them once we returned from our vacation.  That way I would have tons of family pictures to choose from.  I had the vision:  white shirts and jeans, on the sandy beaches of the Caribbean.  Except I forgot to tell Tay and Bill to bring a white shirt.  And I forgot to bring a picture-worthy white shirt for myself.
So we made do.

And the humidity?  Hair havoc.

Once home, we reviewed the photos, trying to find one that we all could agree on.

Personally, I liked the jumping ones.

(our attempt at a family Buddha pose)

But it's pretty tricky to get everybody up at the same time with decent expressions and open eyes.

After much debate and many opinions, we settled on this one:

Nice.  Except for my hair mustache and Bill's Jack "The Joker" Nicholson expression.  But the children were happy.  So we sacrificed our best picture, for theirs.

My favorite picture taken that day was this:

So cute.

They should be in the mail today.

And guess what's sitting in my kitchen at this very moment??

Now I just hope Bill has time to install it tonight.  If he gets home from work at a decent hour.  And after we clean the church for FHE.  Reality's telling me not to get my hopes up.