Before the party had begun and after the house was readied for the festivities, I took some pictures of Leidys feeding my nephew Adrian. I do this not just for the memories, but also to test the white balance set up on my camera so that it is ready for taking pictures inside the house. (It looks more like a group feeding.)
Here is a close up of Adrian. I didn't really take a close-up, I kind of just blew up the image.
Again setting up the aperture in my camera so that I can get lighting right, I took this picture of Elisabeth as she was helping out. So I enlarged and cropped the image to what you see below.
Once the camera was ready, I began to take what I thought were memorable pictures of the family. Here is Adrian and his grandmother Dania.
Group shots with my family are always hard to take. Everyone wants to be posed and they want to do it fast. It was a mess, none of the kids wanted to take a picture and they were squirmy. I had to make Elisabeth smile and my in-laws were growing impatient, while striking their poses, with me.
While editting the photos to upload them onto Smugmug, I liked my father-in-law's pose and enlarged him. He is a handsome man.
Finally the guests arrived and I was able to take some group pictures. They are sloppy, but memorable. These are the children of family, friends and neighbors. Some are from New York, Indiana, New Jersey, and from right here in Georgia. Look closely and you can see Amelia's dad hiding behind here while keeping her standing still for the photo-op.
Here is the family. Well, almost eveyone.
The theme of Joseph's birthday was Thomas the tank engine. For party hats we had conductor caps and cups cakes put together as train tracks. Thanks to Wal-Mart for the idea and my sister-in-law Leidys for the decoration.
Then it was time for Joseph to open his presents.
After we opened presents and ate the cake, everyone went outside to swing at the piñata. Here is Joseph winding it up to take a swing at it.
Libby got a shot at the piñata, but she had to be blind folded so the piñata would not go flying.
After a few more kids took a turn the piñata broke and the kids just stood around looking at it. You would think they have never seen one before. So we had to tell them to run and go get the candy. So here they are plundering the cache.
Finally the party was over and everyone went home happily. One last word, thanks to German Quiñones for risking his life as he held the piñata and protected his eyes from sharp flying candy with goggles.
