the family reunion post...

I have had a few of you ask how the family reunion went...

OH MY GOSH!!!

These people are so much fun!

Here are a few of the highlights...

We celebrated Christmas since we aren't all able to be together on the 25th ~

actually we had a holiday celebration every day.
Christmas, Halloween, and 4th of July
we meant to do Easter too, but the days were already so full.

The Santa your momma warned you about!

(available for parties)

Chinese auction, this is before the craziness of stealing presents began.

Can you see the Christmas tree on the wall?  This is how creative my brother Wil is,

He forgot to bring the fake Christmas tree and so, lucky for him, Danielle thought that sidewalk chalk would be a good thing to put in our box of fun, and after that all of the holidays we celebrated were with decorations on the walls.

Genius!

I made soldered pendants with  pieces of my Bushie's crocheted doilies for all of the girls and gave them to them at the Christmas party.  

To celebrate "family" we had Mafia Night (don't judge, it was fun)

The mob boss is on the left, if you couldn't tell already.

Yes, he was also Santa!

(again, available for parties!)

Everyone's idea of Mafia night spanned the ages...

The flappers!

flappers with Snooky

apparently Hannah thinks Snooky is part of the Mafia.

so did Uncle Kevin with his paper cut out gold cross!

This was a highlight for all of the kids...

For the "Kirby Fourth of July" celebration

My brother Pat built 2 soap box derby car chassis

and brought them to the reunion for the kids to finish building and to race against eachother.

So him and Santa, aka Mark, and Dudley who are all builders and mechanics

and Jack of all Traders, taught the kids who wanted to learn,

how to build the cars using power tools.

I think the girls were the first ones to jump in!

How cool is that?

oh and guess what...

Pat gave me a lesson in welding while we were together!

I'll show you what I made another time :)

how jealous are you right now?

Finished and ready to ride!

This is one of the two that they built.

Yes, helmets were necessary... we only had one wipe out :(

don't worry she's o.k. :)

and it only deterred a few from trying these out!

You, Patrick, are awesome! xoxo



O.k. this was even better ( for me anyway)

My dad, aka Gega, taught anyone who wanted to learn

(and wake up early enough to meet him in the kitchen)

how to make his

Gega's Famous Sausage Gravy and Biscuits!

there was note taking going on, let me tell you!

some of these kids never went to bed, they were all up until 5:00am when they decided that if they fell asleep they would miss out, so they kept eachother awake to do this with their Gega.

being a vegetarian, these were my treat...

but I almost converted back to my carnivore ways when the gravy was being dished up!





DELISH!.

Way to go Gega! xoxooxo

We celebrated Halloween too!

complete with loot!

We had trick or treating for the kids at each families cabin.

they loved it :)

looking at Max's pile, I think their might have been a different sort of looting going on!

Gega and his grandkids, minus 4 kids.

My hope is that everyone can make it next time!

because this is where you can just be yourself, no matter how goofy that self is,

and well, you just plain fit in!

"Being part of this family

means you are part of something very wonderful.

It means you will love and be loved for the rest of your life.

No matter what."

this is the quote on my living room chalkboard right now.

It was meant for all of my children to see

before John moved to California last Tuesday.

How am I doing you ask?

that's a whole 'nother post.

For now, I'm making pumpkins like crazy and making a mess of my house.

So let's see...

all back to normal

I know, I know...

define normal :)

Thanks for stopping by!

love,

Theresa xoxo