Cousins!

Our favorite part of our trips back to Utah is to spend time with family. My kids love all their Grandparents, Great Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. On my side they have a whole slew of cousins ... I think the grand total is 20. Its always loud and chaotic when we are together but a ton of fun too! Tony's side finally has its first non-Tami&Tony grandchild - YAY! I'm glad that Reese and Kai are only 14 months apart. I feared that all my kids would be in school before the other grandkids were born. 

In typical Tami fashion I missed out on taking pictures at many fun events. No pictures of Lagoon or lunch with Grandma Debbie, no pictures at the dump with Grandpa Thompson (how sad is it that Blakes most vivid, and favorite, memory is when his Grandpa took him out to the dump to watch the Garbage trucks. Stinky, dirty and yucky but he loved it), no pictures of Uncle Jeff and Aunt Aurora's big preception (my kids looked darling and the event was AMAZING), no pictures playing at the park with second cousins, no pictures of taking Papa Bruce on a 4-wheel ride, no pictures of Grandma Closes back to school breakfast (held almost 2 months early just so my kids could be there) ... and that's just to name a few.  Ugh, when I think about all the fun things my kids did that I didn't preserve with pictures it makes me sad. Heaven knows I forget waaayyy too fast!

I do have a couple random pictures.  Here is Aliya with her favorite cousin Tanaeya. They are only four months apart and get along really well! I wish they lived closer. My oldest 3 each have a cousin from this family with in 6 months ... old Kai Kai threw us off schedule so he and their youngest are almost a year apart.

 L-R: Hannah, Cheltzie, Blake, Tanaeya, MaKelle, Taeya, Aliya, Brittlyn, Keon, Jaden, Jessie and Abby (Landon and Kai were there somewhere). We were missing Colton, Matthew, Tanner, Parker, Evan & Mason. Its crazy to me that the dark haired kids in the picture are mine. I always think they have light hair until I get around all these light blondes!

One night Nuncle Matt grabbed the kids and took them shopping. He SPOILS my kids rotten. He let them each pick out something. Blakers immediately knew he wanted a garbage truck, Kai picked a dump truck, Tae a walking cat and I don't remember what Aliya got ... make up I think. Blake keeps asking when Nuncle Matt is going to come visit us so he can go shopping again with him. Looks like he's got his favorite uncle picked out! Almost as exciting as getting to go shopping, the picked out fireworks. My kids LOVED it! Had I known that was the ONLY fireworks my kids would see in 2011 I would have taken pictures (due to our drought Texas banned all fireworks ... it was a quiet 4th of July).

Thanks everyone for making our trip so much fun!