Nathan's Baptism...

My nephew, Nathan, the second of Jeff and Mary's children and just three months younger than Alice, chose to be baptized when he turned eight. It was a nice day and very special to be with him at his baptism! Here is a pic of their whole family...with another bun in the oven due mid-March...and the best news is, it is a brother for Nathan!

Make-up Reunion Day...

My mom planned a day for us all to be together since Chris, myself, Betsey and Leo didn't attend the Hamm reunion in McCall this summer. It was fun! The weather was looking iffy, but it ended up burning off and being nice and sunny. We did the giant slip and slide in the backyard. Such fun! I wished I had had my swimsuit!

Ruby heading down...

Sarah...a nose plugger after my own heart.

Bearded Braden spraying the slide so it was slippery.

Alice looks like she's taking it a little rough here, but she was having fun! We started getting the soap out so that it was slippery enough. She's got suds going...

Nathan...all suds-ed up.

Alice and Emma.

Chris always finds a way to up the excitement and increse maximum potential fun and hazard. Jeff and Chris started slingshotting any willing kids down the slide.

Amanda, Van, Leo and Heather...a good audience.

All the cousins minus Leo. We should have thrown him in so they were AAALLLL there...but with two more on the way, what's the point!? Yes, Amanda and Mary are expecting! Amanda is having a third boy (yay for Leo!) and Mary doesn't know yet.

The missing kid from the grand kid shot.

We had a great water balloon fight. Why do they never last long at all? Seeeriously, all that prep and then a minute and it's all over. Still, it was fun! 

Molly with her balloon.

Alice, Leo and Chris laying around.

This is Leo's life. Women on all sides, all the time! Poor Mason (or Van, I can't tell because I can't see the face or size) wants to get a shot at his little buddy, but he's not standing a chance!

Chris, always a favorite of the cousins...getting pig piled on!

I got a gallon size ice cream maker and made peanut butter chocolate ice cream and fresh mango sorbet. TASTY.

McCall 2013 Getting there...

I haven't blogged from my phone in a long time...of much at all in the past two months since Leo was born, so I am trying a few posts from my phone, if I can blog from my phone it will happen more.

Now that I have four kids, it is harder to drive with other people in my van because there is no room! That made getting to McCall without Chris hard this year, also because I didn't have Ruby or Alice to help. With eighteen members of my family planning to go to the cabin together for the Hamm reunion, I didn't feel I could add five more to the mix without my sixth...Chris to help me. It's hard when we are all there, it's just busier and meals are harder, cleanup is harder, maintaining order in the cabin is harder, etc. add that I am there with a nursing newborn and no spouse, and it just is a burden to the others because when it is mealtime, bath-time, bedtime, sunscreen time, etc., if I am off with Leo, there's no one to serve my kids, well, Betsey, without one of my other family members to help. So I decided to stay home for the crowded week and join up after the Hamm reunion when it would just be Braden's fam and my folks left. Total bonus that Robb's fam was still here for 24 hours after I got here. I was so grateful to my parents and Robb and Heather for offering to take Ruby and Alice with them for the fire week so that I didn't feel I had to go at all, my original plan was to arrive Wednesday so they could have a few days of cousin time. If we didn't all live close enough to each other to enjoy regular gatherings, I would have felt I was missing out more, but honestly, not going was such a stress relief! 

Anyway, so in the end, and the plans were last minute, I flew to Boise and rented a car and drove the two hours to McCall with Betsey and Leo. It still took 9 hours from waking to arrival, but it was easier on me because I could hold Leo and didn't have to stay awake at the wheel or hear him screaming for hours on end. This is possible because Leisha let me use up some of her buddy passes on Alaska Airlines!!! So amazing to fly for $33! 

It was Betsey's first flight that she remembers, her only other flight being when she was just a few months old. She loooooved it!! She was on a window and was so curious about the clouds and the rivers and patches of land and I could not convince her that the rivers weren't ice! She was so darn cute, I loved flying with her! All the little things that made her excited were such fun to witness...being served pop on her own little table that went up and down and up and down. Not having to sit in a cars eat on the flight...long conversations about how big she is and how far up on the chair her big girl head reaches. When I told her she could take her seatbelt off and stand up on her chair to see the ground out the window, she didn't believe me, after we clarified for awhile and she saw others walking around, she gave it a try and was so happy!

She will be sad when she realizes she is driving home with Chris and Leo and I are flying home. My hands were very occupied the whole time, but I managed to get this single pic of my sweet girl!! It was Leo's first flight too and he was unaware and slept for most or it or bobbed his head around attracting the admiration if all the people on the flight who weren't already taken with Bets.

After walking circles around the airport and the parking lot and the airport again (with luggage, car seats, a stroller and two fussy by that time kids who were taken from bed at five AM, we got our car! Shortly after we got on the road, Bets was out cold. She didn't hear Leo screaming or me singing along to my iPod. She just zonked. Thank goodness!!

Soon we were enjoying the beach!! Yippee!! Robb and Heather didn't leave until Sunday so we had one day to enjoy with them! Here is Aunt Heather gooing with Leo.

Betsey got right down to mermaid business...

American Girl Cousin Birthday Party...

Instead of doing a big deal birthday party this year, we just did a little joint party for Ruby, Alice and Emma at Oma and Opa's (Heather and Robb and fam are living there temporarily while they search for the right house to buy/build). Heather did the food and I did the activities. It was so much fun because the older girl cousins thoroughly enjoy one another. I loved it because it was so much more chill than other parties we've had in the previous years! I loved doing it with Heather instead of on my own. She is fancier than I am and did a great job with all her prep work!

Love the fancy drinks Heather concocted! So did the kids!

Candy...notice we had a theme...American Girl dolls, and this girl I knew in my K-12 career offered her leftover AG decorations which were actually really substantial and really made it look fancier and more tied together. She even delivered them to my mom's house!

See...place settings for dolls and their human friends! So cute! Flower shaped grilled cheese sammies...always a kid crowd pleaser!

Alice and her birthday doll, Julie. 

 Sarah doesn't have a doll, so she had Alice's doll from Christmas last year. Emma with her doll...don't know her name...I think it is a look like me doll.

Ruby with Rosie and Hailey with crazy face and her doll, I belive is Marie Grace. 

 Dessert was a tasty ice cream mud pie dessert that was in a planter and looked just like dirt...only the dirt was crumbled oreo. They loved it!

 I bought the paper "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE REALLY CALLED" game things and the kids decorated them and then had a lot of fun playing with them together, as each one had a different theme, different questions, etc. I love my mom in this shot...in her winter coat. It's how she rolls.

  

I also got some little openable suitcases for the kids to paint and decorate.  Heather got the girls matching jammies...Alice and Emma matched and the older girls matched. So cute!

  

2012 Hamm Family Reunion: Ensign Ranch

We had a great extended weekend F-M with my family this year for the Hamm Reunion. We stayed in Cle Elum at Ensign Ranch, a great recreational property owned by our church. We had a great big lodge with two gathering rooms (shuffleboard, ping pong, pool) and a huge commercial kitchen. There were nine bedrooms in the lodge and an outbuilding bunkhouse divided into two bunkhouses that had five twin bunk beds in them. With a family our size, space is really essential and we were so glad to all have room to spread out. Jordan had plans with friends in Chelan, so he wasn't able to come. Jeff and Mary had an exchange student from Japan, Mari. She was there with us...in spirit...the girl didn't have much personality...and I can extend lots of personality lacking mercy to someone who doesn't speak the language...but this is a lack of personality that I think is likely extended to those who speak her native tongue as well. Anyway, she was there. :) Here's a story in pictures of what we did...

Molly, who would throw down flat on the ground if I pointed my camera at her a few weeks ago was a willing subject for my attempt at a good pic of her, and I have to say...I got it! YAY! She is Jeff's youngest.

We celebrated two birthdays...Sarah's and Adeline's. A few presents and some birthday cake and homemade ice cream. It was good times.

Adeline loved her princess nightgown. She came over to me pointing at it and saying "princess". So cute!

Jane and Carson, my favorite little duo.  

Betsey. Anytime she is willing to look at me, I take her picture. 

Betsey is iffy with any kid her age. She mostly suspects that they are going to take everything she holds dear from her, so there are a lot of "mine!"s and hoarding of toys and people. Anyway, she and Addy have good moments too...here they are loving each other. They are just like four months apart in age.  

Alice playing with Betsey and Van...she's so good with the little kids and they just love her. She was wrestling around in the grass with them for a long time. It was so cute! 

Van. Mini-Braden...I love him. He's a boy and I love that about him! Look at all the cuts and scrapes and bruises on that perfect face! MMMMMM. Cute.

Mason was super athlete...outside with the ping pong stuff hitting the ball all over the place...so well! That is the bunk cabin we stayed in back there.

 Alice and Van. So cute! (Van is Braden's littlest and Mason is his oldest)

 The cute kids admiring the grazing horses in the pasture behind the lodge. I love this shot, I wish Adeline and Molly were there too!

 The lodge. 

 Alice, Sarah, Ruby, Hailey and Emma...the first five of my parents' grandkids were girls!

This is all of "rounds 1 and 2"...two kids born to each of the married Hamm siblings. Nathan...the sixth...the first boy to carry on that juicy Hamm name.  

 Adeline loves uncle Chris. Actually, they all love uncle Chris. His arrival is like the main event of any gathering. It dies down after some chasing and screaming and tickling and scaring. Addy toddled over for some uncle Chris fun and he was happy to indulge.

 My parents are tight with one of the workers at the ranch and she wrangled one of the horses over to the fence to say hello to the kids before bedtime.

There is Mari...they don't have horses in Japan! 

 Before bedtime, we sang a little song about the family from the children's hymns at church. It was super cute. All the kids in their jammies singing. The chorus goes,

"God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be--

This is how He shares his love,

for the family is of God."

 I had to sneak a picture during our bedtime prayer. Looks like Jane and I have some of the same sneaky prayer peek genes.

 Alice lost a tooth just before she left for the trip. The one next to it was VERY, VERY loose too...I want a kid with no front teeth!

 On Saturday morning (my kids were still in their jammies with their ratty bed head) we made marshmallow guns. The kids had fun with that activity!

A little target practice... 

 Then we went horseback riding. Well some of us. There were two options based on skill and experience. Ruby and Sarah were able to go on a trail ride, governing their own horse. Ruby rode Jethro, they gave her an ornery horse because she had the most experience in the group. She was thrilled. She told me that she would pull Jethro out of the walking line and then when everyone had passed she would trot back to her place in line. Hahahaha...she wasn't going to be satisfied by just walking. :)

 The other option was for the little kids to have a guided ride by a parent (who knows nothing about horses). It was a fifteen minute ride and the riders had to have shoes and socks on, but the guides, whose feet were right by the heavy horse feet were fine in flip flops. I wasn't getting the logic, but whatever. Alice can ride pretty good, but she wasn't big enough for the trail ride, so she did her little fifteen minute walk.

 Even Betsey got to get on for a few minutes. She was soooooo thrilled and this will probably mess me up a little big in the future when we take the others to their riding lessons. Shoot.

 I had to keep this pic because she actually showed her dimple! She has a really obvious dimple, but she never seems to show it off in pics. Probably because she never really smiles for pics.

As if marshmallow guns and horses weren't enough, we spent like four hours at a giant waterslide/slip'n'slide that is another fun thing Ensign Ranch has to offer. I went down several times and really enjoyed it...the kids went non-stop for hours and hours. It was a hot day!

 Adeline playing with Uncle Chris in the bucket...

 Chris was by the slide in the sun for a long time while I napped with Alice and so he was sporting his usual weekend sunglasses sunburn that evening. 

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning and then had lunch and nap time and finished the evening off with a cute play written by Sarah and Mary. Chris was cast as the main character (favorite uncle)...the Big, Bad Wolf. He was a very good sport and got into character well. The play was adorable, the BBW got amnesia after failing to take down one of the little pigs, so he went from story to story trying to see if he fit in. Hint: the glass slipper didn't fit him.

 The kids had cute little parts and really got into it as well.

 We invited the volunteer missionaries who run and maintain the ranch to come and enjoy the play with us. They actually took a lot of pictures and seemed to really enjoy it.

Mary didn't get a very well rehearsed cast, so she had to really feed the kids their lines, which worked great! Thanks, Mary! 

 Oma was the Grandma in the Red Riding Hood part of the play. She makes a great Grandma!

 Cutest little brother pigs EVER.

Jordan surprised us all by arriving at the ranch right when the play was about to start. He and his girlfriend Ashley had been in Chelan and thought better of cruising straight past us (you can see the ranch from I-90, and they had avoided Hwy 2, so they were on I-90). We were so happy, Jordan is the other favorite uncle...he's the novelty uncle somehow.

More reasons why Chris is the favorite.

Many of the cousins and Mary are taking piano lessons, so they did lots of practicing and playing at the piano. Heather was the weekend pianist.

Sunday after the play, my folks set up a screen and showed a presentation they had prepared about our family and the importance of temples.

Betsey folded into a bucket. She looks unsure about it, but this was her second time wanting to go in there and she loved it. :) 

 

What a great reunion! I loved the adult time too...playing games. The men played lots of shuffleboard and many enjoyed ping pong. Mari was good at ping pong. Looking forward to next year!