Cute Pics...Mia Familia Part 1

I took these pics of Sienna last week and just found the fun effects you can do on Shutterfly. I'm currently in love with the soft focus and blur edge. I splurged on some prints, I hope they turn out as cute as the look on the screen. This was her first time in a dress and tights --- way to big tights.

I've been harassed by those that didn't know how many brothers and sisters I had, and I tried to rememdy by posting a couple of pics last week --- or the week before. Time flies at 35. The problem? I only posted two siblings and they were holding Sienna. I promise I'm not biased, I am totally grateful for all of my family.

So here's the first in a series of posts about my wonderful siblings and their families. We are the perfect example of how great a blended family can turn out to be. After 20 years, the term 'step' has vanished from all of our vocabularies.

This pic is my older sister and her family, we call them Team O'Brian. My sister is Rhonda and she married Patrick about 2 weeks after I graduated from high school.

The tall creatures are the OGs(original grandchildren) of the family. Nolan and Shane are twins and are totally eleven year old boys. They live in sunny California, clearly not pictured here. Nolan and Shane are the most caring and loving boys you will ever meet. They bring joy and light wherever they go. They are a reminder to all in our family that miracles can and do happen everyday. I know that every healthy birth is a miracle, but these guys are extra special. Rhonda is a DES baby, DES was a drug mothers took in the late 60's to prevent miscarriages. Sounds great, except 1 in 100,000 of these babies developed cancer --- uterian cancer. Rhonda is the 1 in 100,000 and at 19 had to say goodbye to the dream of carrying her own children. Enter modern science(invetro) and a spiritual force(clearly God's hand at work), fertilized eggs were placed in Rhonda's 50 year old mom(yes the one who took the miscarriage drug in the 60s) and not quite 9 months later Nolan and Shane were born. It's hard to imagine it now, looking at these gangly rowdy boys, that they were once smaller than Sienna.