Our very last Christmas celebration for this holiday season actually fell on New Year's Day. So I guess this counts as that recap too. Our New Year's Eve? It went something like this: work all day, family dinner, KW bathed and in bed, a little bit of TV, and then in bed before 10. Party animals we were not.
Anyway, this last celebration was with my mom's side of the family. She has one sister and since both of their parents have passed away, it's really just the two families (Mom's and my aunt's) that have to coordinate schedules and find a day to get together. Shouldn't be too hard, right? It's ridiculously hard! Our families are expanding and we're all super busy, but getting to see each other is definitely something we make time for.
This year was my mom's turn to host, so our Country Cousins, as we call them (I'm sure we're their City Cousins), drove our way early on New Year's Day. I didn't do a great job of remembering to take pictures throughout the day. I have just a few pictures of the kids outside playing and then I put my camera down until food and presents time. Oh well.
Have you ever tried to get a decent pictures of 8 wiggly kids? While they were on a slide? Yea, it's no easy task.
Here are my Mom and Dad and my Aunt Kim and Uncle Ron. They are the oldest generation at these gatherings.
Then is my generation. My mom's three kids with our spouses, and my aunt's two kids with their spouses (except it looks like I didn't get a picture of Joel and Ashley together...Oops).
And the ten of us in our generation have added LOTS of cute little people to the family! I think there are 14 grandchildren total but Anna and Wyatt weren't with us this day. And we'll be adding one more to the mix in June so next year we'll be at 15 and the adults will be officially outnumbered by the kids. Yikes!
And I thought 8 kids on a slide was a hard picture to get. Ha! Twelve kids on a couch was even more difficult.
Right now the grandkids are equally divided - 6 girls and 6 boys (7 of each with Anna and Wyatt). In one week we'll find out which side's gonna inch ahead by one!
After eating a delicious lunch (that definitely included black eyed peas and cabbage so that we'll all have a good year), all 26 of us crammed into my Mom's living room so that we could exchange gifts. We keep it simple these days by all the kids receiving just one gift each. The adults bring generic gifts so that we can play a fun game of Dirty Santa.
Since my uncle is a New Year's baby, we also got to have a birthday party. At his request, my aunt brought a homemade cheesecake so we quickly sang to him so we could dig in.
Here are a few other snapshots from throughout the day.
It was a really good wrap-up to all the holiday festivities and I can't wait to see all of these guys again this spring! We'll head to see them then and hopefully get to visit Paige and Roger's horse arena. You can still ride a horse at 7 or 8 months pregnant, right???