It's That Time of Year

Our Christmas season has begun and it's not even Thanksgiving yet.  Which reminds me.  Why do the stores in our town already have Christmas trees up and Christmas music playing.  Seriously.  Can we at least have Thanksgiving first?

Anyway.  My mom's side of the family was together for the weekend.  It started with supper Friday night and ended with cleaning up the facility Sunday evening. 

It's lots of fun.  There's multitudes of people.  Some that we only see a few times a year.  Which is crazy cause most of us live within 40 minutes of each other. 

Mom has a Dad and a Mom.  They had six children.  Each of their six children had an average of four children.  One has five and one has three.  The remaining four have four each. 

That's twenty-four grandchildren.  Then the grandchildren started to marry and have children.  There are 26 great-grandchildren with a few more on the way. 

As I said.  The family is large. 

Out of all those people only a few never showed up during the course of the weekend.  One cousin and his wife live in Oregon.  My uncle, aunt, and cousin are in Africa for a couple/several months.  Not bad for a family that large.  We've been blessed.

Grandma had one big activity planned.  We all collected our milk jugs over the past month and this was the result.

Waiting patiently for the building to begin

The finished product.  Unfortunately, it didn't take long til a side caved in cause there weren't enough milk jugs to close in the top.  So...while the munchkins napped, a new igloo was built.

And the final product.  The children loved it.  Sure, it's a little tall for an igloo, but it held together well.

Saturday night we had gifts.  All the great-grandchildren got something and the grandchildren who had not yet graduated from school got something.  Our children were so excited.  It seems that this year they have caught on that gifts are fun. 

If only I could accurately portray to you Will's excitment.  Grandpa called his name to go collect his gift and Will squealed, giggled, danced his way to Grandpa.  He was giddy with excitment. 

Addie, meantime, was perched on my lap wringing her hands.  She was one of the last to get her gift and was sure that they had forgotten her.  Tears were nearly running.  But, she did get a gift.

They were thrilled with their gifts.  Addie got a gingerbread house-making kit and Will got a sugar cookie mix and tub of frosting.  Both got aprons.  That is my kind of gift.  No clutter.  Make the gift, eat it up, and it's gone.

Most of the littlest great-grandchildren who all got aprons for Christmas.

Sunday we had breakfast and a little church service.  Then each person was on his own.

There was lots of napping.....

Checking out the innards of the igloo.....



Snitching snacks off the heavy laden snack table.....

Skyping overseas family members....

Playing games in the game room.....

Snapping pictures of the four littles who got their step stools from Great Grandpas....

And resting up for the coming week.

I'm certain he wasn't sleeping.  He always just 'rests his eyes'.

It was a fun weekend.  God has blessed me with a godly family.  A family that has it's differences, yet still loves each other and is able to spend entire weekends together.  And still be having fun at the end of two days.  



And this Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for family.  Family that serves the Lord Jesus Christ.