What better thing could possibly happen on a Sunday afternoon with all the cousins together?
This past Sunday all of the Abbott's were together after Rosaline's baby blessing (daughter of Dave and Amanda Knox) for the Abbott feed your face and talk event. It was oppressively hot and sticky while we tried to get a picture of the whole Abbott clan. It was miserable standing in our church clothes in the heat tyring to keep kids in line and smile. After the picture we enjoyed a wonderful meal of BBQ beef sandwiches, fruit, veggies, broccoli salad, potatoes salad, coleslaw, beans, and chips (and probably other stuff that I have already forgotten). Then suddenly the heavens opened and poured down rain for 30 min. Just enough time to cool everything off and drench the children. My first instinct was to call my children in so they wouldn't get wet and dirty (unfortunately my reasoning skills have been reduced to thinking in terms of messes to clean and laundry to wash-- a family of eight is a lot of work.) Fortunately the smell of the rain brought me back to my senses as I recalled my own childhood memories. I can remember being a kid during the summertime and at the first sign of rain running in the house to put my swimming suit on. Sometimes the rain never came with more than a sprinkle, but sometimes it was a downpour that led to flooding. I always hoped for the floods. Obviously I was ignorant to the cost and damages that flooding caused. Growing up in Alamo we didn't have swimming pools. We did have an awesome hot springs 8 miles outside of town and a nice cold springs 12 miles outside of town but that required finding someone to drive us which wasn't always so easy to find (something about our parents informing us that they were busy and had work to do.) So when it rained I was ready to make the most of the water. I loved playing in the puddles and having the rain hit my face. The rain was always so cool and helped assuage our sunburnt skin. I also loved sucking the rain water out of my hair and a little scoop of mud always tasted good too. I probably shouldn't tell people my childhood secrets, but I found my mouth watering with the memory as I wrote it. The smell of a summer rain in the desert is one of my favorite smells in the world. I love the smell of rain anywhere-Atlanta, Brazil, etc., but nothing compares to desert rain storms. Home will always mean Nevada even if some days are 116!
Here we are all together. Most of the eighteen children are looking. I'd like to know if anyone got all 18 looking at the same time!
