I come from a small family.  It’s essentially just me and my parents.  Always has been.  I have extended family, but they don’t exactly live nearby.  I love my parents very much, but  we’re not a riotous family.

Coming from a small family, I’ve always wanted a big family with lots of people around.  I guess you always want what you don’t have.

Connecting with my extended family can be difficult.  They don’t really relate to us that well, nor we to them.  I guess I am lucky to be friends with a large family.  One much more riotous than my own family.  The friendship started with the daughter a long time ago, but now extends to much of the family.  Sometimes I even think of them as a second family, a family in addition to my own very loving family.  What a lucky person I am to have two families.

But this family is a riot.  In the best sense of the word.  They get into fights with each other.  They make up.  They debate the oddest topics to the minutest of details, always ending in riotous laughter.  Time spent with them is never boring.

Which brings me to the photos.  I guess I never made a real effort to capture the riotous quality of the family before in photos.  Since I visited them recently, I took advantage of it.  Some of the photos are of the family, some of the friends, some poignant, some playful.  All together a riot: