Proof
So the last night of vacation I told you I would take pictures like there's no tomorrow, and I did. This is the before shot of Jake and Michael in the Go Kart. Don't let the big eyes fool you. Jake wasn't the least bit scared. Though perhaps he should have been since Michael apparently takes Go Kart racing VERY seriously. Like homecoming-game-senior-year seriously. But then, apparently I do too. By the end of my turn as Jake's driver, we couldn't even see the driver behind us. And I was very proud.
And this is the post-shot. I've been trying to get a picture of Jake's thumbs-up signal for weeks now and finally captured it. The two thumbs up is even better, though it's usually accompanied with loud woo-hoos and means that he's accomplished that little toilet-training feat we were so stressed about several weeks ago. I haven't been able to capture it - and knowing all that, maybe you wouldn't really want to see it anyway.
True to the whole lightning theory about how it never strikes the same place twice - we had a little trouble re-creating last year's awesome Branson Landing family pic. Jake has his shoes on in this one, true, but he's been brought to stormy, devastated tears by the fact that we DARED to ask him to pause and pose for a family picture while he was hungry and had just endured the grueling task of riding comfortably in the stroller while everyone else walked the mile or so from the car to this bench. Okay, Drew (on the right side) and I actually took the trolley.
There are more: Drew in his Go Kart. John in his. Their cousins in theirs. Everyone watching the Go Karts. Jake watching the Go Karts. Jake at the Disney Store. Us at the restaurant. Michael's brother and his wife at the restaurant. Jake taking a manly swig of his Root Beer.... It goes on and on.
And I was glad. I'd be crying right now if I didn't have a single picture of vacation. CRYING. Because then that beautiful week would be gone forever, swallowed up by the Missouri hills we drove through on the way home, the stink of the trash we'd failed to remove from the kitchen before we left, and the layers of winter skin just waiting to push through those happy tans.
Thank. God. For Cameras.