Family Reunion

Recently, much of my entire extended family had a sort of family reunion in Chicago for my grandma's 90th birthday. My grandma has six kids, 17 grandkids, and, so far, I think 13 great-grandkids (half of her grandkids are too young to have children yet), and all but three grandkids were able to make it to Chicago. Plus, there were a ton of relatives that I didn't know at all who made it as well. It was great because the kids got to spend time with all of their cousins, and I got to spend time with my sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. I love when the family is able to get together like that, but it also makes me a little sad because it is such a rare thing. I truly hate that our kids are no longer growing up with most of their cousins and they don't ever get to see each other. Not only are schedules hard to coordinate, but the bigger issue is that nobody can afford to travel. It's too expensive! This trip never would have been possible for everyone without the generosity of my parents making it happen. But, thankfully, everyone got to do it and we had a great time. Nobody except for my own family will care about the following pictures at all (and Jay will make fun of me for putting them on here), but this is the only place I keep track of pictures. So, I am putting them on here anyway, for my purposes only (in completely random order, I might add). Nobody else has to bother looking at them!

My three sisters, my uncle, and me

I'm not sure why we all look so orange, but I think it has something to do with the lighting. We weren't all hitting the tanning beds before the trip!

Addi, Luke (who now lives in TN), and Jake

Addi and Ryann

Luke and Jake (Jake REALLY misses him)

My grandma with many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren

Addi reading to my uncle

Killing time in the Bass Pro Shop

If our eyes look a little crazy, it's because I was trying to manually get rid of red-eye and it wasn't working so well for me.

The kids found this store to be quite entertaining!

Addi and my cousin, Clint

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Jake and Addi with my cousin, Nikki

Jay and I with my aunt and uncle (two of my favorite people in the whole world)

Jay with my grandma

The boys - Jackson, Luke, Jake, and Mac, with my cousin, Clint

My dad with two of my uncles (his two youngest brothers)

Our kids with all of their cousins, my parents, and my grandma

Random video of Addi reading to my grandma. I know that there's too much background noise and you can't really hear her, but that's not the point. I just wanted to keep this memory because Addi was so cute with my grandma. It was really surprising to me how Addi kind of took to her because, truthfully, my grandma is not a very endearing woman. Addi was great with her though and it was adorable.

At one point, my grandma was sitting in the family room with the kids while they were watching Finding Nemo, and Jake and Addi were trying to explain to her what was going on in the movie. Oh, if only I could have gotten that on video. A 6 year old and 4 year old trying to explain to a 90 year old who can barely hear, the plot of a cartoon movie about a lost fish. That would have been a keeper for sure.