Final Holiday post-3 of 3

Just some misc pictures of our family, cousins & time. Sorry if I duplicated some.

G'ma had all the kids sing "jingle bells" before they started with gifts.

These were after supper, before gifts, & most of the kids went in the living room & played "concentration". Not easy to get them all lined up for a picture together, so this is the best I got.




Patrick with his two little grandkids-- "Cheers"!!

My cousin Karen's little girl. She just turned 2.



My niece Heidi & My cousin Lynsy. Heidi & Ryan. These two cousins are the same age--Just 3 weeks apart. Hard to believe they will be 21!!
Just some misc pictures of our family, cousins & time.
We really missed our family members who couldn't be with us!! Hope those of you who see this enjoyed seeing a glimpse of our evening, & enjoy the memories of other times. Make plans for next time!!

Holiday fun- post 2 of 3

I have very few relatives on my dad's side of the family. He was one of 5 boys, and he and 2 of his siblings are gone now. I have 7 first cousins, two of whom I haven't seen since they were babies (they are near my age) The other 5 are the ages of my kids, since my other two uncles got married around the time that I did. Our grandmother died quite a while ago also, so my extended family on that side is pretty small now. I love that my step mom puts forth such a effort to keep us connected!

My Aunt Linda, Cousin Karen, her little girlTaylor and my cousin Todd

Three yellow dump trucks waiting patiently... Gma Jane has 3 great grandsons!
Here we go, gift time!

Everyone waits (well, most everyone!) while Gma hands the gifts out, and Gpa Art watches the whole process with his gifts in hand.


Practical, & perfect! She knows it's something we'll use!

Now, everyone has to wait to open their gifts while Gma opens hers from us. Whew! what a trial of patience on those little kids!









I cannot even begin to express how totally organized & incredible Gma Jane is at this! Over the years there have been very few exchanges of sizes. How she keeps track of all of that, & the buying process she has is WAY BEYOND me!!

One more post to come.

Annual holiday bash-1 of 3

Posts that is, not 3 bashes!
Have you ever seen the movie "My big fat Greek wedding"? Well, I don't see very many movies, but I have to admit, that this one is one of my all time favorites. The first time I saw it, a girl-friend got it, & invited a bunch of us girls over for a girls party, & we about laughed ourselves sick/silly over it! I like it partly because I can relate to it quite well. Our family's big and we're loud. We like to laugh too :)
Every year my step mom Jane, has us come to her place for a family get-together. Any and all of my siblings (4 of us) Our spouses, and our children (combined there's 26) plus their spouses (currently 5) Any current boy/girl friends of the children, the grandchildren (currently 7 and 1 on the way) My 2 uncles & aunts plus their families, my grandfather, and Jane's friend Jack are all invited Of course now there are some that are too far away to come, and with this many, we just pick a date that will work best for the majority.
This (post) is really a tribute to our lovely step mother, "G'ma Jane". She has been doing this for about 14 years now, and has carried on even tho our dad passed away away 8 years ago this fall. This year there were 36 of us. I don't know how other people's holidays are. We each have our own families traditions, gatherings, food & fun. None of my family celebrates with a tree or a huge pile of presents, so this is something we experience only at G'ma Jane's house. When we arrive for our evening of fun, (A couple days ago on Friday night,) This is pretty typical of what greets us:

and as fun as that looks, really our evening is full of far more. Before presents is a couple hours of eating, visiting, fun & clearing up from the yummy supper that she always makes for us.
Lynisha brought her beautiful & delicious sugar cookies to share.

G'ma Jane, & Jack. (I'm surprised that I got a picture of her sitting down, she's always waiting on all the rest of us!)


Cousins, games, visiting, goofing, laughter,

The 3 musketeers. Cousins & best friends, Landon, Rebecca & Meshayla.
Floyd & Jeanne....This was Floyd's first family holiday bash with this side of the family. He's probably asking her "What did I get myself into"?!!

Food, and the coffee is non-stop.


My niece & her dad


Leon with two of our son-in-laws and Jack with my Uncle Fay.
And, it's times like this I miss my dad the most. He loved family get-togethers, he loved watching his grandkids, he loved telling a story, and I think he was always amazed that Jane could pull this whole bash together so well!
(To be continued)

2 of 52

What did I get myself into? ugg! I hope this gets easier as it goes along, or maybe I'll get used to looking at pictures of myself? Maybe I don't really see myself in the mirror?
I'm also having camera issues. I'm going to have to study the manuel & see if I can figure out my
settings better or something, I am not getting very good pictures. Again here the batteries were going dead, so it's blurry, but I thought it was a sweet picture of Kyrie. I can now sympathize with my grandmother--one time we came across a picture of her with my mom & a couple of us grandkids, & she'd cropped her head out of the picture..... LOL! (I was horrified, then & now. I just understand her feelings better now!!)

hmmm, what's new?

It's back to school day for the kids. This is the longest vacation they've ever had. My little ones were getting kind of bored I think. The snow is mostly gone, and there's not much to do outside with cold & no snow.
I've got some catch-up work to do that I put aside while the kids were all home, so am anxious to get working on that again, and I have a photo calendar to make before Friday when we'll all be going to Gma Jane's for our Holiday get-together. Then I'm planning to have two little grandkids here for a bit, and am anxious for that.
We have a ton of home-improvement/repairs that we need to do, so the other day we went to Menards to look at things. Doors, floor coverings & paint samples. I came home with a pile of paint samples/ideas, and am SO anxious to do some re-painting! I've been telling myself that I had to wait till the "new year" to re-do the living room....well, it's here!! I've also been planning on re-doing (or maybe I should say DOING) our bedroom for several years, so those are first on the list! Oh...woops, guess I'd better finish up that trim in the bathroom downstairs so I can put that picture on here for you all too!

I "heart".....

My grandkids!
It was so fun to have them here this week.



UMMM, Pretzels, chocolate, almond bark & Carmel!




Bye, Grammie, see you next week!