I'm Lena - an artist, writer, feminist, and creator of things.
I really look forward to getting to know everyone here and am
really glad there's a group just for us.

Here is my photo.

That's me.

This is a family photo taken in 2013 when we were at a bed and breakfast in Fredericksburg, Texas. My two sisters, my mom, and my dad. It was almost Christmas and everyone was off of work/school, so we planned a short trip. It was only for a couple of nights.

Honestly, I was dreading it. We're not the closest family. And by that I don't mean we don't speak or anything like that. We just don't really share a lot between each other. More often than not, when we get together for long periods of time, we get antsy, cranky with each other, and frustrated about the whole situation.

And we never do anything fun together. We hadn't planned on "having fun" on this trip in the typical sense of, say, drinking together and doing stupid things. The plan was to wander around the quaint town, look at all the cute shops, and eat at some authentic German restaurants (there was a large population of Germans that settled in Central South Texas in the mid-to-late 19th century), which we did.

And then we came back to the B&B and went to bed.

But on our last night, something happened.

One of my sisters loves candy and we happened to find an awesome little candy shop as we were walking back to our cottage. As we perused the shelves, that same sister found wax lips. All three of us had played with those as kids, and it brought smiles to our faces. She suggested we all buy some and take a family photo - so we could at least do something fun on our mini vacation.

So upon getting back to the B&B, we all opened our lip packages (and my dad's mustache package) and went to take a picture.

Those things have little protrusions that you can bite down on so that they don't fall out of your mouth. Well, for some reason, my mom accidentally bit hers in half. Time after time, as we tried to take a picture, her lips kept falling out.

That got us giggling.

And then we giggled harder because we were giggling.

And then my mom farted.

Holy crap, I'm cracking up as I'm typing this.

After having had three children, she's never been quite as "secure" down there as she used to be. If she laughs too hard, or sometimes even if she sneezes, to her utter horror a little toot will slip out. And it kills us every time.

So that's the memory I have of that picture: us trying to keep it together enough to take a relatively comprehensible photo before we collapsed in fits of hysteria. We had to take several shots because inevitably one of us would be laughing too hard to keep still... which made all of us laugh even harder.

And throughout all this my mom kept yelling at us to stop laughing before she peed her pants. Which made it ten times worse.

So besides being one of the best ab workouts of my life, that will always stick in my head as being one of the very rare times my family actually had great fun together.

Thank you for reading! I hope it made you giggle a bit.