through the years

My parents raised eleven children. ELEVEN! I have three and not a day goes by when I shake my head and wonder how my parents, my stay at home Mom especially, managed without going completely insane. Watch as the family grows from one to eleven.

The first born...little did they know they had opened the floodgates...no looking back now.

On the balcony of their little apartment in Germany. The little guy in my mom's lap fell off this balcony one day, three stories down onto the cement. We love sticking magnets to the screws of the plate he now sports in his head.
They arrived in Germany with three kids and left Germany with five children. My mom had to travel home, from Germany to Massachusetts with five children under the age of six and 6 months pregnant to boot, by herself. Have I mentioned she should be nominated for sainthood?
The clan now numbers six. And this is where things start to go to pot.
HUH??? We jump from six little ones to a bunch more, some full grown. That's what happens when you got so many, the picture taking falls by the wayside. There are now nine of us in the picture. We completely missed me and my younger brother and sister as babies. Oh well. My sisters loved to tell me I was adopted because of the scarcity of baby pictures of me. I'm the gorgeous child in the white dress. :)

In this picture we have extras...my Grammie, my aunt Sr. Teresa and my uncle Fr. Jim. Yep, a nun and a priest. Have I mentioned we're Catholic...oh yeah, eleven children...I guess you knew that. Only ten of the eleven here. Not sure where my oldest sister is, but this is the first with my youngest sister so technically the family is now complete. I'm the lovely girl on the far right.

And here we are in our uniforms. No, just kidding. We all ran in a road race called the Monster Dash. You ran in a costume. Well, we all didn't run in it but somehow we all ended up with t-shirts. Actually one of my older sisters is absent here. She was away at school. Notice a pattern . There always seems to be someone missing. Can you spot me here? I'll help out, almost smack dab in the middle.
Finally! It took till we were all grown but they finally got a picture of all eleven of us all at the same time. This was at my youngest sister's wedding. See how happy my dad looks...that's because he just married off the last of his girls.

And just for fun.....

This is all their fault. And as per usual people are missing. Can you find me now???