Family-In-A-Day

I tried to prepare the kids for meeting our families, in person, but even my Emme girl had a hard time translating a picture or skype face with an actual person who could hug and hold her. And to say my family (not to mention anything about Todd's side) is large would be an understatement. The kids have been growing up in a mission-community. There's a uniqueness about these people in our lives. They're often more than friends because, in the absence of family, these friends become family to us. As a result, Em and Coop have been trained to call people "Auntie" or "Uncle." We had to not only explain to our 2 and 3 year old that some people are family by birth, and some are family by church (that was the only way I could come up to explain it to them!). My Aunt Nancy, who is my mother's sister, and two of her three kids came up to visit. Preston, her middle child, is ten days my junior and we have always been great friends. They came to Auburn for a short visit, just one day but I was so glad they did. When they left to drive back to Southern California, our family of 5 headed down to my Grams' house to visit with my two youngest brothers and my extended family on my dad's side. As we were pulling into the drive way, Em asked who was going to be there and as I started naming off all the aunts and uncles, I hear her clear voice in the back of the car saying, "Shooo Mommy! You have a LOT of family!" We feel so blessed to have so many people surrounding our small family, loving our kids, praying for each of us. It has truly been unbelievable.Emme with Cousin Braeden, who is 6 weeks to the day older than her.

My youngest brother, Justin, and my brother in law (Braeden's dad) Chad.

My second youngest brother, Andrew, who was home from University of Hawaii. Dispite this fact, all three kids fell in love with him AND he made each them their own quilt. Em and Coop were over the moon about that!
I was never a girlie-girl. My sister reminds me that I used to wear dresses all the time as a kid, but that was because I, as an all-knowing 6 year-old, insisted on a certain hair cut. My mother knew it would look awful (which it did) but let me learn the hard way. Thus, the dresses I had to wear all the time because the haircut made me look like a boy. Not tomboy, B. O. Y. Boy. My older cousin, Jennifer (above), was in fact a girlie-girl. She always had the bows and ribbons, and true to form, helped both girls get their girliness on during our visit. Em thought she'd died and gone to heaven.Harper, on the other hand, couldn't understand why she had to sit still for so long.

But in the end, even she came around to love the head decorations.

We have a version of the picture above with the same group of cousins at just about every major event in my life: graduations, birthdays, wedding, and now, with what has been coined the "Leslie Litter". Not sure I'm crazy about the sound of that one.

My Aunt Nancy, not to be outdone by Jenifer in the fun-new-relative department, started singing old camp songs. We all made her sing them over and over until her face was red from the lack of oxygen. I'm not sure how fun it was for Aunt Nancy, but the rest of us were having a blast watching!

Cooper loved his GG (aka Great Grammy) and all the fun stories she knew. Grams was great at just sitting and dutifully reading story after story to the three.

My dad, who had a busy work schedule over the holidays, came up for a few days. It's hard to explain what it's like to introduce your children to the family they've known about, but have never met before. The day rounded out with a communal bath, and all of the kids fit in the same tub my cousins and I all used when we were this age.