Merry Christmas!

Celebrating these 2 together!

Family Reunion Fun

It's UP!

Celebrating 18 years!

Building a Pavilion

Today we helped my nephew work on a pavilion at his church for his Eagle Scout project. He designed it, raised funds for materials, and has built it with the help of friends and fellow Scouts. The boys raised the roof today, although my oldest stayed on the ground until I wanted this group photo. Can you see how nervous he feels about posing up there? Boy, didn't they tease him about that!

Go #11

Since he's graduating from high school, this is his last season playing lacrosse, so I wanted to be sure to catch a game. We drove down today to watch him play, and enjoyed a fierce game, albeit a loss for his team. Oh well. It was fun anyway!

Meanwhile his cousins & siblings were having a little fun at his expense...

Fortunately, he was a good sport about it!

I'm so proud of this group of cousins!

Tonight the oldest graduated from High School and we're all so excited for him! He has a very bright future ahead of him, and we can't wait to see what he will accomplish. He knows that he will always have this supportive group behind him!

More Family!

My Favorite Part of Christmas

Our Family

It was so good to spend this past weekend with all of them!

Almost the whole fam-dam-ily!

We always try to squeeze everyone in front of the Christmas tree for our annual family portraits.

This year the weather was so nice on Christmas day that we were able to pose outside on our favorite boulder in my parents' yard.

I can remember playing on it when I was a kid and it seemed to be huge.  It must have shrunk over the years!

Extended Family Party

Today we celebrated Christmas with more of my family!  It was a crazy, fun-filled day with all of these great kiddos!!

And then, since the weather was mild again, we went outside so that we could get all of the adults in the picture too...

Oceanside at Christmastime

My sister's Tennessee daughter wanted to touch the ocean, and since the weather today was unseasonably warm, we decided to humor her.  We all piled into our cars and headed for the coast!

It was a great day, relaxing and exploring the rocky shoreline at Fort Williams Park (Portland Headlight) and Spring Point in Cape Elizabeth.

Wicker Bassinet

Another Great-grandson

Big Brother, Little Brother

This year little brother wanted to participate in the Egg Toss game.  He thought it was great to toss that egg at his big brother! It was an absolutely beautiful, picture perfect, day at 'The Farm' yesterday for the reunion, and I got some great pictures.  For so many reasons, this is my very favorite.

Family Reunion

And, this is only a few of them...we have so lucky to have such a huge family!  :-)

We found some mud!

The older kiddos and I headed out on the trails on our bikes this afternoon.

Thanks to the recent rains, there were plenty of deep mud puddles to play in!

We've arrived!

We made it to my sister's family farm and we are already settled in.  The kiddos are trying their luck in the farm pond.  They've caught a couple of fish already and are having a great time!