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The holidays generally tend to bring families closer together; however, special occasions at the Roper household generally turn into chaotic stories filled with blood, sweat, tears, and other bodily fluids. My personal treasury of holiday memories holds a vast variety of exciting tales which include familial discord, arson attempts, deliberate defecation, and blood-stained floors. While these memories dance around like sugarplums in my head, allow me to recall the time the Ropers took a family Christmas picture in December of 2006.

It is now a quite common practice for families to send out family portraits along with their Christmas cards and my mother took up this holiday tradition as a very serious practice. Knowing that I would drop by the house one Saturday with my roommate from college, I was told that we would take a family picture by the mailbox if my roommate would oblige and take our picture for us. With a couple of quick snaps with only minor bickering over where my brother should stand, it was over. (Or so I thought.)
When I returned home at the end of the semester, I was informed that we would be taking the picture again. As I looked at the picture that showed no flaws, I inquired as to why we had to re-take it. My mother was not pleased with it because it did not show enough of the house. Her intention was to send a picture of the house she was so proud of to someone who had made her feel inadequate in the past as a way of showing off, I suppose. In addition, my brother was not pleased with the picture because he was not satisfied with his appearance because after all, this picture could have been sent to families with single girls! (Isn't it a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband?) Hence, we had to re-take a perfectly good picture.
We were going to pose again in the front yard on a Sunday afternoon, but my brother's sudden, unannounced visit to Circuit City ruined this chance. We all got ready and waited for Nathan's return, but by the time he came back, it was too dark and too late. It was then decided that we would try again at 10:00 a.m. the very next morning.
I had a full day planned for that Monday. Unable to let go of the previous semester's habit of planning an entire day on a post it note, I wrote my to-do list that began with getting my driver's license renewed after taking the family picture. I went downstairs at 10:00 a.m. sharp, but

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