15 years ago...

Every year, my family gets together to take a picture for our annual Christmas card. Of course when Walker and I both lived at home this wasn't really an ordeal, but now that we're all spread out across the southern United States we have to plan a time to get together and take the most important family picture of the year. The picture that we will send out to a couple hundred friends and family. This is the picture that should (hopefully) show our best sides and we always hope to look a little better (and thinner) than we did the year before. The Christmas card picture doesn't represent our thoughts on the whole Christmas season, and we're not usually this vain, but who really loves having their picture taken?

My mom called me a few weeks ago and we started talking about what we were going to do for our Christmas card picture for 2007. We typically get together at Thanksgiving and take the picture then, but because we spent Thanksgiving apart this year we weren't able to get the picture taken care of. I suggested that we resurrect a picture from the Akin Family Christmas Card archives and play a joke on our Christmas card recipients. Everyone was behind this idea for a little while and I started digging through the pictures. This is what I came up with...

This picture was taken in November of 1992. We went down to the poinsettia show at the Louisiana Tech University greenhouse and had our picture taken there. The only thing I really remember about this outing is that I fell down in the middle of all the poinsettias. And that's normal as I fall down about once a week.

I'm sharing this picture with you now because it will not make the 2007 Christmas card. After we had this decent plan worked out to use the old picture we all realized that we're going to be together this weekend! We had completely forgotten about our trip to Chicago. On Friday, we all (mom, dad, Walker, Todd, Lauren, and me) are flying to Chicago from our respective locations and spending the entire weekend up there doing nothing but shopping, eating, and enjoying each other's company! Thank goodness that we'll have Todd and Lauren there to take the picture so we don't have to ask a stranger again. This year's picture will be the last Christmas card picture of just Hudson, Karen, Erin, and Walker Akin. It's very exciting, but definitely monumental!

Stay tuned for the big reveal of the 2007 Christmas card picture!