October 20

Today we took our annual trip to Pastorino's Pumpkin Farm in Half Moon Bay. We left earlier than usual to try to avoid some of the usual traffic (which kinda sorta worked), listened to our usual college years-inspired Pandora mix, and arrived late-morning for our customary pumpkin-picking action. And because I'm me, we also took our annual photos, including our 15th one in front of the entrance (which I know sounds funky since Abby is two weeks from 14, but bear with me).

The first of these images was taken back in 2004 when I was extremely pregnant with Abby and looked like I was trying to smuggle an extra-large pumpkin from the lot. The following year it was just me and my girl, and then Logan appeared as a bitty baby boy clad in an orange bodysuit in 2006, with Isaac and Brady joining up in 2008 and 2010.

A lot has changed over the years, and this succession of photos captures those changes in a particularly salient way. The most obvious and painful is how Logan wasn't there and then was and then wasn't once again, but there are also the more subtle changes that I like to look back on, like pinpointing the year when Abby's height surpassed mine or when Isaac's eyes were a little less sensitive to the sunlight.

Although none are artistically perfect --because someone's always blinking or frustrated or trying to run off or sticking their toddler-hand down my shirt-- they're pretty perfect to me because they're beautifully imperfect us at our genuinely imperfect best. And though I wish "us" still included all of us, I'm thankful to have a snapshot of our family history laid out in a such a visible way. And I'm thankful that though Logan can't be in our pictures, he's still and always will be one of us.