Cousins Week Through Jennifer's Eyes

Here are a few random pictures that Jennifer took throughout our week together.

Josiah is at the top of this tree!

Day 7 With Cousins

Our last full day here together.  The kids were very helpful in getting things picked up, the house cleaned, and things packed.  We topped off our time here together by going out for pizza.  Yum!

Day 6 With Cousins

Aaack!  We leave for our long trip tomorrow, so I spent much of yesterday getting ready.  Obviously it's a bit crazy around here with thirteen mouths to feed and little fires to put out, but it's crazy fun.  Here are just a few snapshots from yesterday.

Day 5 With Cousins

Today we took our cousins to visit the nearby Amish area.  They are so used to city, city, city in Osaka and were amazed by the wide open spaces of the country.  They loved seeing chickens and squirrels in the "wild", which can be seen in zoos in Japan.  Funny!

We ended the day with a pre-birthday cake for the upcoming July birthdays and then shot off some fireworks.  Here are some pictures from the day.

Caleb wanted to help me "clean" the cake beater.  Thanks, bud.

My shot of the day from Amish country:

The birthday girls

Nineteen!

That's the number of years of marriage that Chris and I celebrated today.  We left Jennifer with ten kids and armed her with pizza and a movie and took off on a dinner date.  Thanks, Jennifer!

As newlyweds we thought we were so madly in love and were so excited to start off on the adventure of marriage.  We had no idea of how much better things were going to get.  It's true, we are more in love than nineteen years ago, we have grown closer than we ever thought possible, and we had no idea that what we started on June 27, 1992 would turn into what our family is today.  We have been blessed.  God has been so good to us.  If things are so much more than we could have imagined nineteen years ago, what's it going to be like in another nineteen years?  Next year we're going to celebrate big.  I can't wait to dig into some destination planning soon!  I love you Chris.  Happy Anniversary!

Day 4 With Cousins

Today had more fun and adventures.  I must be a glutton for punishment because I took the kids to Bonkers for a second time within a week.  Crazy, but fun!  We love making memories with the cousins.

Feeding lunch to the crew:

Josiah and Elijah finally met each other's match.  They both love hot and spicy and kept trying to "one up" each other with cayenne pepper on their taco salad.  We think Elijah won because Josiah ended up with tears moisture in his eyes.  

Guess who...

....Gideon and Caleb

Going Bonkers again.

 

After Aunt Jennifer took several pictures of the kids climbing around the animals, she noticed the sign on the elephant's ear.  Oops.

The line-up in age order (14, 12, 12, 12, 10, 10, 7, 5, 5, 3)

The line-up in height order!