Rice/Meigs/Wachdorf family portrait, January 2010. By Daniel Meigs. (Minus Dan, who couldn't come on this trip.)

One of the smartest things my family ever did was start recruiting outside for talent. By this, I mean that when we get married, we really do our best to bring people into the family who have useful skills. It's great if you're a nice person and all, but what can you do for me? That's really what matters. For instance, Kelly has the ability to get Aaron in line, and that is more than anyone else was ever able to do. Also, she has such unbelievably cute babies. Go look at this and then tell me I'm wrong. Then there are the Daniels, my husband Dan and my sister's husband Daniel. They both know about computers, which is great, because none of the rest of us do. And as I may have mentioned a couple of times on the blog before, Daniel is an incredibly talented photographer. When my family got together a few weeks ago in Mississippi to collectively fawn over Aaron and Kelly's new son Clark, Daniel documented the whole thing beautifully, and so I have some great pictures to share thanks to him. Sorry it's taken me forever to post them.

Pretty soon we're probably going to just go ahead and declare Daniel MVP of the family, since he also spent hours salvaging photos and data off Kelly's dying computer during this trip, and on a Mississippi visit a few months back, he installed a new kitchen faucet in my parents' kitchen. Frankly, he's making the rest of us look bad.

Here I am blowing out the 30 (!!!) candles my mom and Kate put on my birthday cake. I like how Kate looks halfway scared of all the fire gusting off the cake. She has good reasons for that. I was worried we'd set off the smoke alarm.

Clark attends his first late night coffee drinking session with my siblings. We'll probably make him wait until he's three before he gets his own cup.

The newest member of the family. LOOK HOW HANDSOME HE IS.

With his beautiful mama.

Kate, of course, racked up in the loot department on this trip as she does every time. Here she is sporting some of her new dress-up/Mardis Gras fashions. If this child doesn't grow up to be a Rockette, it isn't going to be because our families aren't trying.

Daniel, I love you so much for taking this photo. Aaron modeling the feather boa. It looks good on you, Arnie. Pink is a nice color. I don't know why more men don't wear it.

Kate works the camera with her Aunt Audrey.

Audrey and Kate take two, Napolean Dynamite pose:

Hannah and Baby Clark snuggle on the couch.

My brother Ryan and his lovely girlfriend, Rebekah.

And then just for purposes of making Daniel's work look even better, here are a couple of pictures I took of Kate holding Clark. She loves Baby Clark. She pretty much wanted to hold him all the time, but she definitely requires adult supervision, since when she's done holding him, she just starts getting up to walk away. It was good information to have for our own upcoming adventures in having a newborn around. But really she was so sweet with him.

As always, you need to check out my amazing brother-in-law's work here.