All together

A few weeks ago, my brother Kyle and his family came for a visit, which meant we were able to have all of the cousins together... a fairly rare event, but very much treasured!  

My brothers & I are all spaced approximately 3 years apart, so I never dreamed that we'd all be having kids at the same time.  In fact, with a brother 9 years older than me and parents who got married and had children young, I thought for many years that I'd be babysitting nieces and nephews when I was in high school.  Yes, I was that naive.  

In any case, despite being the youngest, I was the first to get married and to have children, so here we are... 6 cousins under the age of 5.  It is so much fun!! :) 

Gwen was not at all sure about all of her big boy cousins at first.  This is her shy face.  It cracks me up!

 

 She got a little more comfortable as time went on.  It was best if a) Kaeden was not nearby and b) Mommy or Daddy was nearby! 

Her favorite part of the weekend may have been watching Ryan run and slide back and forth across the hardwood floors. 

 

She was pretty fond of the babies too.  They weren't quite so intimidating!

 

And she learned pretty quickly that Auntie Lucia means being harassed by a camera :)

Of course, my mom was quite insistent that we get a photo of all of the grandkids together (as if I wouldn't have insisted myself)... I don't think one photo would do justice to the event that it was.  I sort of wish we had been videoing the whole thing... it was quite amusing trying to get 6 little ones to be still and look at a camera.  Fun times :)

 

 

 

 

 Thanks for the memories, y'all!  I'm looking forward to many more years of cousin shenanigans together :) 

Aunt Sara

One of the reasons that I am so excited for my kids to have cousins that are close in age is that I was SO blessed to have cousins that I was very close to growing up.  I only have 2 cousins total, but they lived only an hour & a half away, and Sara is only 2 months younger than me.  If it had been up to us, we would have been inseparable as kids.  We were as different as could be (and in a lot of ways, still are!), but the very best of friends.  

We don't get to see each other very often these days, but it is always such a treat when we do.  I was so thrilled that she could come for a visit last month to see us, meet the new babies, see the new house, etc.  It was far too quick and started out rather stressful thanks to a poorly timed ice storm, but it was still wonderful.  

Lucky for Sara, most of my old photos of us are still packed up in the attic, but I was able to find a few :-)

 

At my wedding rehearsal

And, here we are present day :-)

 

Thanks for the visit, Sare!  We love you!

Pumpkin Patch 2012

Another fall, another visit to the Pumpkin Patch for our family.  This time, we had Uncle Bret, Auntie & Atticus along as well, which made it extra fun.  

Ryan's annual growth photo (Kaeden was not in the mood):

First stop: hay maze.  The boys just loved chasing each other through it:

Award for most loved activity (at least by Ryan & Atticus) this year goes to the corn crib.  They had two of them this year... one for older kids and one for younger.  Of course, they all had to go in the older kids one since Ryan was too big for the 3 & under one.  It even had slides.  So much fun!  

 

Ryan was in absolute bliss the whole time.  I think he would like to live in a giant pile of corn. 

Kaeden was not so into it and only agreed to enter if buffered by Daddy:

He did get in on a little bit of Ryan's craziness:

 

Still, they spent a good bit of the time watching:

 

And eventually, Mason took him over to the younger kids one, and he got a little more adventurous... but not much!

 

Next up was the slide.  Everybody liked that!

  

 

Sweet moment with Daddy

  And then came the hay ride.  Atticus was quite happy, waiting for the ride to begin:

We decided to try sneaking in a family photo.  The boys were a little distracted:

During the hay ride, we got out to explore the corn maze.  It was all going great until Kaeden fell and got a bloody nose/lip.  He deteriorated pretty quickly from there on out.

Even so, we took some time to check out the cotton field and pick some cotton.

 

And getting to sit on a big tractor revived Kaeden a little bit.

 

But it didn't hold him over long enough to get any kind of decent pumpkin photos this year.

 

Oh well.  

 Thanks for another fun day, Ganyard Hill Farms.  We'll shoot for 5 years in a row next year :)