It's Great To Be 8

For the New Year we headed to California to see my nephew Sam be baptized. We left on New Years Eve with my mom, brother and all the kids in tow. Chris got a nice 41/2 day bachelor's weekend to himself.
We got to California around 7:30pm and met the family at McDee's to give the kids some play time and not to ruin my sisters new house. There were some fierce basketball competions going on and my nephew Ben holds the record with 52 points in 45 seconds. (In case you're wondering I believe mine is 46 or 48). We then got to see my sisters new home in Lathrop,CA. It is so stinking cute. The kids made themselves right at home and Brian quickly went to work setting up beds for all of us. Everyone but the two oldest boys went to bed, they were pooped. Sally's friend Shanna and her hubby Don came over to play games and we learned some "interesting" things about my brother that we weren't aware of! Tyler made it until 11:30 ~ which was 12:30 for us, but he just couldn't hold on till the chime of 12.
Thursday we went to the greatest park ever in their neighborhood. I got to run, which was really nice for me. We played a little basketball but mostly we played tag on the play ground. I was so sad I forgot my camera, it really was a cool park.
My brother-in-law Brian is so amazing. He set up a race track for the kids and it kept them pretty distracted so we could play our own games. He also set up a really neat scavenger hunt. The kids looked all over the house for pieces of the puzzle to their next activity (like the hunt wasn't enough). Then they put their bags together and found that Uncle Brian was making a fire, they were going to roast marshmallows and have Smores and he was reading them a story. HOW FUN!!!
Funny side note, I'm not sure where the mallows came from, but they were SUPER hard. The kids ate them anyway, of course. Later, after they went to bed Tyler got up to what I thought was needing to use the bathroom. We steered him in the right direction and he ended up puking. Of course I was freaked he had the flu. We did not need 7 kids with the stomach flu two days before Sam's baptism. Turns out his stomach just didn't like the hockey puck marshmallows.
Still, I think it will be one great memory for my kids!
Friday my mom gave us a girls day/boys day. The girls got to go to lunch, then we headed to Color Me Mine where everyone picked a piece of ceramic to paint and have fired. Then we met up with the boys to see Bolt in 3-D. The boys also did lunch, and then went to a place almost like Camping World (I can't remember the name of it) and the got to shoot air bullets at targets and they also got a tour of my sisters town. They seemed to have a lot of fun. I did keep Patch and he got to paint with the girls.
Saturday was such a nice day. We all got up and helped clean up from having 12 people in the house all week. We scrambled to get us all ready on time, which we did. Then we headed off to Sam's baptism. I love going to baptisms. The spirit was so strong, and it is fun to let my kids have the experience of talking about the promises we are making. All the cousins got to sing together while Sam got dried off. They did such a good job, I was so proud of them. And of course we headed back to Sally's for a yummy open house. She really has some nice friends, and despite having a million (no exaggeration there) people over, the kids did great!
We had one last hurrah as mom, brother and sisters. We went to Trader Joe's and then to a late dinner where my crazy brother and I decided that we should pack up when we got back and take off through the night. He was really missing his girls and it made sense at the time. Let me tell you that's one of the hardest things I've done. We had already been staying up too late every night so we were super sleep deprived already. I think we did a great job of trading off when we knew we were spent. It really was nice not to be driving all day with cranky kids, hopefully my mom survived the trip.
Thanks Sally for the great time, good food, and games. We really had such a fun time. Thanks mom for all the fun activities and food. Thanks Jim for helping drive and taking care of my babies, and thanks Brian for being such a rockin' uncle.