A few weeks ago, (early January.. because I'm so bad a updating my blog) Tony and I were lucky enough to spend a weekend with his family in Ames. We had a second Christmas (because one just isn't enough these days!)
Anyway, it's only natural when you get all the Bal Indians together that a wonderful and entertaining time is had. And naturally when celebrating, pictures will be taken. The family decided this year they wanted to take a family photo. When this group requires organization no one should worry, there will not be any problems or challenges, everyone is a take-charge leader.... However, this in itself can be the challenge....
Picture prep:
Angleing to get ahead of any potential confusion or mishaps the day before the photos, Jyoti made a complete list of every picture that needed to be taken. "Grandpa and Biji. All grandkids. All of the family. All of the family with girlfriends. Just the girlfriends. Just the boys. Just the girls. Just the boys with girlfriends. All the couples. All parents with their kids. All the parents with their kids and grandpa and biji. All the middle kids. All the young kids. Etc." This gave us all significant reassurance things would run smoothy the day of the photos.
The other piece of prep work was finding sari's for all the girls. Biji, Tony's grandmother, had seemingly thousands of colors and patterns of saris to choose from since she is also the former queen of India (if you didn't know, she is the beautiful woman after whom the Taj Mahal was designed and built.... Wait... No that's..Bina Rai... Wait no, she is from the original Taj Mahal Bollywood movie -which of course we watched after opening Christmas presents and ham dinner... Naturally...
Anyway! Finding the saris was entertaining as well. Luckily for everyone, Jyoti knows colors very well and let us know who was an "autumn" and who is "winter" thus the beautiful dark green Sari was stunning on Carol and would have made me look like burned spinach soup. Ciera and I, the token white, blonde girlfriends, just observed and held colors up to our faces for the selection process. Before this day, a "sari" for us was a form of apology. Eventually after an explosion of the Indian color palate, we all had a traditional dress for the next day.
The day was almost glitch-free.... almost.. but the pictures turned out well and we all had a LOT of fun :) Enjoy!
And the best for last....
