In October we spit and polished up the kids and drove out to Red Rocks, NV to take a family picture.  Unfortunately, we got there a little later than planned and so we had to take all of our pictures within a 30 minute time frame.  We used Robert's little clicker to to take the family pictures and I think we were able to get some good pictures of everyone.  It was a little rushed but to tell you the truth, the light lasted longer than the kids did!  You just gotta go fast when you have so many kids, I guess.

Here are a bunch of the pictures we took.  (You'll recognize some of them from our Christmas card.)

 

 

Thanksgiving

*****note*****   This post includes a ridiculous amount of pictures.  Feel free to skim or skip completely.  In my defense, there were a ridiculous amount of people to take pictures of.  :)

This year, for Thanksgiving, Mom and Dad decided to spend some long-overdue time with Dad's brother Steve and his extended family.  Knowing that my parents would be on the East Coast, we decided to host Thanksgiving at our place.  We imagined that a lot of the families would opt to spend the holiday with their spouse's families, but we would be happy to take who we could get.

As it turned out, only Scott and Russ and their families were going to their extended families for the weekend.  That meant that we got everyone else to come to our house.  It was a pretty awesome deal.  We had Gina & Shawn, Craig & Robbyn, Jim & Steph, Spence & Lisa and Lora and Mark...plus a couple of kids here and there.  When we counted it out, we had 28 guests!

It was loud.  It was chaotic.  There were babies, teenagers, middles kids and adults...everywhere.  And it was just wonderful being able to have this noisy, fabulous group all together.  

Lora and her crew came in on Monday while the majority of the rest came in Tuesday and Wednesday.  We kept everyone busy with park visits, racquetball, volleyball, soccer, Frisbee golf, books, movies, and lots and lots of legos!  

There were at least four different park trips....

Ellie on the death-trap.

Yve, Lucy, Alaina & Ellie.

Penny, Alaina, Yve

Mark and Naomi

Craig bravely took this gaggle of kiddos to the park by himself! What a wild and crazy guy! 

(Gina hopped in for the picture but she and Spence and their kids went to the city that night to see Blueman group) 

At any point in the week, you would find somebody reading books to somebody else.  It was fun to catch them in the act.

Look how excited both these kiddies were in the middle of a very dramatic reading.  At the same time.  (My son is a genius.  He can read upside down!)  

And thank goodness for our fantastic box of Legos.  It also got a great amount of use.  If you care to notice, the boys and girls play legos completely differently.  Boys dump and destroy while girls create neat, interesting AND finished creations.

Jason and Peter.

This is what a normal minute of the day looked like.  (actually, not quite so normal, as you can see how still the kiddos are.   A movie was the only way we could get the majority of them to slow down for any amount of time.)

Mostly, the kids just loved hanging out with each other and talking.  (So did the adults!!!)  Here are some random shots.

Maggie & Alaina

A bunch of boy cousins!

A bunch of girl cousins!

Breakfast.  This was either a pancake fest by Robert (with homemade applesauce sent down by Mom) or 'McScribbies' egg McMuffins made by Spencer.

Cousin pile.  Penny, Shydon, Ellie, Lucy & Maggie.

Craig, Spence, Bella, Thatcher & Bryant.

We missed the little boys in this pictures, but before the next group left for home, we got a fancy picture with the spouses.  

And just the four of us.  (Gina, Craig, Me & Lora.)  I really wanted to get a full brother/sister shot, but everyone kept leaving at random times.  Boo!  Next time!

Dog pile on Jimmy!  (You can't see him under all the cousins...but I promise you, he is there.)

 Ellie & Joseph

More girl cousins. 

 Thatcher, starting Joseph on the rings...a bit early, I'd say.  (Don't worry Mom, he never let go of that sweet baby!  It was just a pose. :)

 Jim, Bella & Gina

Naomi, Shydon & Penny.

Ellie, Lisa and Joseph.

 Lora, Naomi, Joseph and Jason.  (Jason wasn't so sure this was a great idea.  Joseph knew it wasn't.)

Lora, Spence and Jim all playing the piano at the same time.

Maggie & Joseph.  (I'm starting to realize that Joseph was our most photographed child.)

 Shawn, Peter, Maggie, Mark, Joseph, Penny & Porter

Tommy

Bella decided that she needed to escort all the little cousins to the movies to see 'Frozen.'  Gina, Stephanie and I decided that she might need a hand or two or three or four....

We tried over and over to get all of these cool cousins together, but it was just impossible.  This one was our best attempt.  Bryant was with the adults playing volleyball, and so we though we got everyone else.  It was only afterwards that I realized that Ethan was missing.  Argh!  So close!

Another time I started gathering the shoes that I found throughout the house.  That's not a bad little pile, if I say so myself.

Finally (is anyone still with us?)  Our Thanksgiving Meal.

This was, by far, the easiest Thanksgiving I've ever cooked.  All I did was the Ham!  I know what they say about having too many cooks in the kitchen, but I disagree!  The boys took all the kids to the park and the ladies stayed to cook, bake and set up.  Now, granted, everyone else worked much harder than I did, but I think all those hands made this delicious meal come together beautifully.  (Also...I highly recommend cooking Thanksgiving meals without any children....what a difference!)

So, now I'm sure you are wondering where we sat everyone.  Thanks to a very recent craigslist purchase, we just happened to have two kitchen tables hanging around.  That,  plus the dining room table, plus a little kiddie table gave us just the right amount of seats. 

We set the dining room table up with all the fancy dishes.  We squished in 12 adults around the table and tried our best to ignore the hoodlums in the kitchen.  :)

We fed all the kids on paper plates and utensils.  It wasn't that we didn't love them as much, I just didn't have enough glass in the house to feed them all.  (Plus, it made clean-up that much easier. )

At one table we had the big-kids.

At the big table we had the middle kids....side one and

side two....

And finally, the little kids table.  (two silly girls wouldn't let me take their picture....see them hiding?

so I got them when they weren't looking.  I'm sneaky.

Most importantly.  The dessert table. (with only half the pies and treats on it.)  We ate through Stephanie's orange rolls in about 10 minutes for breakfast.  Yum!

And that, my friends, is how it's done.  Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

Then, to make a great dinner even better, the ladies got to get all dressed up and go downtown to see Evita (the broadway play) while the men cleaned everything up.  

It was Awesome!

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it.  Thank you for being such wonderful brothers & sisters  (that means all of you!) and for having such terrific kids. We loved having so much family around, and the only downside was that we missed those who couldn't be there with us.  Maybe next time.  :)