It's summer vacation time...

and I have come back with loads of pictures!

We just returned from a week in Indiana with Mark's family. An annual summer vacation tradition for us. Sadly, this will probably be our last weeklong summer vacation with the entire family. Next summer we will be moving to Indianapolis and we will see our family much more often then we do now.

Each year there is usually another baby (or 2) to add to the mix. This summer there were 12 kids, from age 14 all the way down to age 4 months. Not to mention Mark's grandmother, age 92, his parents, my mom (her first trip to Indiana), Mark's three sisters and of course, Mark and I. Yes, that's 21 people. Luckily, the neighbors offered us their cottages so we were split into 3 houses. That helped the sleeping situation a lot. The kids had a lot of room to play and we had 2 kitchens to work out of. Feeding that many people 3 times a day is hard! We took turns making meals and cleaning up this time and that helped a lot.

So, what do we do the whole week? We went to the Aunt Nancy's annual Luau pool party, we went to the beach and swam in the lake, we played at the park, we pulled out the kiddie pool and sprinkler, we had a birthday party for 2 of the girls, we played lots of cars, we built forts from blankets, we fed the ducks, we went fishing for the first time, we had a baby dedication cememony for Emma, we shopped, we watched movies together, we basically had fun as a family. We also changed a lot of diapers, we wiped a lot of noses, we cleaned up lots of messes, we gave each other our colds and fevers, we mediated lots of toddler "disagreements", and we spent a lot of time holding babies.

I really can't believe how much the kids have grown since we last saw them. I'ts been 8 months since our last visit. Baby Emma is now 9 months old, we met baby Anna for the first time, Grace turned 3, Sarah is turning 4, Cate and Luke are both 2, Rebekah turns 5 next month, David is 5, Michael is 7, Joshua is turning 10 this October, Mark is 12 and John David is 15! For those of you who remember our wedding, John David was our ring bearer. Yes, that cute 5 year old is now 15! I can't believe how fast time flies.

It's good to be home, but we sure will miss all those kids and the rest of the family. Hopefully when we move closer they won't grow up so fast.

I'm having trouble uploading images. I'll try again tomorrow.