Father's Day Weekend.

This past weekend my whole family was together, minus Jordan who gone being a salesman for the summer. Adrienne and Erin and their family's have both come to visit, as has Jamie from Idaho. This means that yes, we have had 12 wild and crazy kids under the age of 10 running around and playing, and I couldn't make me happier.

Saturday I had to work, and then Erin

a and Lindsay and Mandy and Mom and I went to a baby shower for my cousin Emily. It was fun to see her and some cousins/family etc. I haven't seen in awhile. I was tricked into playing a game of chess with Jake, the 10 year old, and shamefully admit,that I lost. Then that night we all got together to visit and have a pizza party.

Then that night, most of the older kids got into a rousing game of Croquet. Not that any of them knew how to play. At one point Isabel gave up on hitting the balls entirely and carried her ball across the yard to the end spicket. We were just glad with that many kids with hard mallets and balls nobody got hurt. We also had a makeshift baseball game, which ended up in a tie, but I definitely got a couple of good hits. Jake was upset he didn't win.

I took most of the kids to the pasture next door, so they could feed carrots to the horses that lived there. Isabel and one of the other little one's are kind of scared so they just chuck the carrots over the fence and make the horses eat them out of the dirt. Well, Jack was not a happy camper when I made him leave to go back to the house. He somehow managed to get some carrots out of the garage and he escaped out of the yard and ran next door by himself to feed the horses. His dad followed him and watched from a distance. After he gave the carrot to the horse and after the horse had finished chewing it up, Jack would throw up his arms and yell "Good Job!". I guess the horse like the enthusiastic encouragement.

Sunday we all parted ways and went to church, got kids down for naps, etc. Then around 4:30 we all got together again. We had a barbecue with hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad, fruit, chips, strawberry spinach salad, etc. Safe to venture that we all got more than our fair share of the deliciousness. Then, the kids got to let loose and go play. We had volley ball going. Then we decided to play with water balloons instead of the ball

Bianca with the empty balloon bowl on her head as a hat.

Then the kids just got to run around and play. Grandma had some activities for them. She had sunglasses, beads and string and fasteners to make necklaces and bracelets, pipe cleaners and fuzzy balls and googly eyes to make animals or dolls or creatures.

See what I mean by violent children swinging things around! India at some point heard older kids talking about fighting bad guys. She grabbed a shovel, yelled "I fight" and started murdering the dirt in the flower bed.

This was my favorite part of Sunday. All 12 of my shining stars and munchkins were all finally in one place so we got them all gathered up for pictures.