If I had eleven kids....I would need a BIGGER house! LOL Okay, the real house wasn't quite this crowded, but there were moments it felt like it was!
Here is the breakdown on our company this weekend:
This is my husbands youngest brother and his 3 oldest boys. He is 10 years younger that us. He also has a 3 month old (That we haven't met yet!!!!) who stayed home with mommy this weekend to avoid the mayhem. (We are supposed to meet him in about 3 weeks when they are coming to visit again. YAY!!!) This brother spent A LOT of time staying with us in California when he was a teenager. So in some ways he feels a little like our oldest child! It is SO FUN that we now have kids all the same age and are living close enough together to see each other a few times a year.
This is my husbands middle brother with his 2 daughters. This is my brother-in-law that was married to my cousin Jan who passes away almost 3 years ago. The girls think it is SO cool that am I related to both their dad and their mom! They laugh about me being their aunt and their second cousin. We are trying to figure out a silly name to sum up the whole connection! (Like Aunt-a-cousin or Cousin-Auntie. We haven't hit on the right one yet! LOL)
This is our niece with her 3 children. She is my husbands only sisters oldest child. Her husband had to work over the weekend, so he didn't get to come. Our niece lived with us for a year when she was 16 and we only had our oldest child, who was 4 at the time. So she seems like one of our grown kids in a way too! We sure never dreamed back then that in 10 years we have all these kids near the same age! You just never know how life is going to turn out!
This is another fun picture. I like it because you can almost hear how LOUD they were being! It was also taken early on in the weekend before my house was totally trashed.
This was taken Saturday night when we all went out to dinner. Yep, a party of 16 eating out! LOL The restaurant we went to gets all the kids up to do the hokie-pokie! Our gang LOVED that!
This was outside the restaurant after dinner. I am pretty sure this was the only still moment the kids has all weekend! I am not sure how I got them to stand so calmly for this shot! Believe me it was short lived.
This was pretty funny. My 14 year old convinced all the other kids that if they worked together they could blow the fire out in the fire pit! This was a stroke of brilliance since children who are blowing don't make a lot of other noise!
This weekend brought back SO MANY fond memories for me since when I was growing up we spent every Thanksgiving weekend with all my cousins on my mom's side of the family at my aunt and uncles farm. I thought of all those trips a lot over the weekend as I realized that I have no memory of who cooked, washed the dishes, made up the beds, etc, etc, etc! My aunt always hosted a HUGE house full of family and made it look easy! I definitely took her efforts for granted all those years! Now I feel honored to be the one with all the laughter and memory making taking place under my roof. Yes, my house is trashed and I am exhausted. But, that will all pass. I hope that this is just the first of many such gatherings that we host at our house.
Although my 14 year old and I have decided we need to have the following sign made for our front door:
LOL, just kidding! I am sure if more family shows up we will find a place to stack them somewhere! It was a wonderful weekend! YES, IT WAS LOUD! But, it was worth the hearing loss to have so much family together!
I still remember the year we had 23 family members in our 3 bedroom house. Our living room was wall-to-wall sleeping bags for the kids -- it was a great way to get to know cousins and friends that we either had never met or hadn't seen in years. I'm not even sure where the 9 adults slept!
Our 18 visitors were from out-of state and their vacations only overlapped by a week, so we made the most of it! We live in Southern California, so we had trips to Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm (my personal favorite), the local beaches and the nearby mountains! What a great memory. Thank you for bringing it up!
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An extremely dense, vertically developed cumulus with a relatively hazy outline and a glaciated top extending to great heights, usually producing heavy rains, thunderstorms, or hailstorms.
Okay, the real house wasn't quite this crowded, but there were moments it felt like it was!
He also has a 3 month old (That we haven't met yet!!!!) who stayed home with mommy this weekend to avoid the mayhem. (We are supposed to meet him in about 3 weeks when they are coming to visit again. YAY!!!) This brother spent A LOT of time staying with us in California when he was a teenager. So in some ways he feels a little like our oldest child! It is SO FUN that we now have kids all the same age and are living close enough together to see each other a few times a year.
This is my brother-in-law that was married to my cousin Jan who passes away almost 3 years ago. The girls think it is SO cool that am I related to both their dad and their mom! They laugh about me being their aunt and their second cousin. We are trying to figure out a silly name to sum up the whole connection! (Like Aunt-a-cousin or Cousin-Auntie. We haven't hit on the right one yet! LOL)
Our niece lived with us for a year when she was 16 and we only had our oldest child, who was 4 at the time. So she seems like one of our grown kids in a way too! We sure never dreamed back then that in 10 years we have all these kids near the same age! You just never know how life is going to turn out! 
The restaurant we went to gets all the kids up to do the hokie-pokie! Our gang LOVED that!
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