More blessings and gratitude.

I've been thinking over the last month about how absolutely blessed I am to have been born into the family I was born into. Not just my parents and siblings, but my extended family.

For as long as I can remember I've attended a summertime family reunion (usually a camping trip somewhere) and a Christmas celebration every year with my Dad's family. My Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Second Cousins, Great Aunts, Great Uncles, etc, etc. Not everybody made it for both gatherings every year, but we all made it to enough of them (and still do) to stay close.

We love any excuse to play games, eat, talk, eat and play more games.

We do our best to attend big events of each other. Baptisms, graduations, baby blessings, weddings, mission farewells, etc, etc.

In short, we love each other, we support each other and we're lucky to all have been born into this family.

Here's the guy who started it all, the coolest Grandpa ever.


with a little help from Grandma. (okay, a lot of help, lol)


Here they are with the 5 great grandbabies that were born between October and May last year.


Here we have some cousins. My brother (in the middle) had his mission farewell that weekend and this was the night before he was set apart as a missionary. He went out with the Young Single Adults to the ice rink. My sister and I crashed the party. With us is a cousin and a second cousin (or something...his mom is my second cousin...but I've always thought of her as an Aunt, so there ya go).


Here's a small portion of the Grandkids and Great Grandkids at the youngest grandchild's baptism a couple weeks ago.


I love that whenever one of us is near another one of us, we try to get together. I love that we keep in touch between the big get togethers. I love that my Grandparents love us each individually, regardless of the choices we're making at that time in our life. I love that my Grandpa will do everything in his power to love and support us when others might have written us off as a lost cause.

I challenge all my blogging family members out there to blog a memory of Grandma and Grandpa or one of our many family gatherings.

Love you all! And I'll see most of you in a couple weeks at Grandma's Christmas!