Family Legacy

We couldn't have asked for a better Thanksgiving. It seems like each year it just gets better. I have 5 brothers and sisters. Including my mom, her 6 kids, spouses, and grandkids we total 35. About 26 plus a couple of friends made it out to our Thanksgiving family reunion. We rented a huge 10-bedroom house for all of us to stay in together. The house had a theater, a pool and a game room.  Did I say a theater?!  I mean, we live in Florida anyway, so the pool was no biggie for my family. And the game room was fun for the kids.  But a theater?! That was exciting. My own personal theater. Well, at least when the kids were out or in the game room it was my own personal theater.  It was also a favorite with the teenagers. My son actually slept in there a couple of nights. But when they were in the game room, the theater was mine! :) No, seriously, we had a couple of nights we all chose a movie and watched together. It was very nice.

Even though we were staying near the Disney parks, we had plenty of entertainment right in the house. Some days some of the families visited the parks, went to football games, and went shopping, but most days we just hung out at home. The guys watched the football games on TV or went swimming with the kids. My favorite was when we played Monopoly Deal or Uno. There were times that we had several games going at once because to have too many players in one game just made the game slow. And with a dining room table that sat 20, we could have several games going. We also had a blast playing Charades. Kids and adults together.

Thanksgiving dinner was catered, so we didn't even have to cook. Can you tell I don't like to cook? We do have some cooks in the family, though. Every day someone baked cookies or made some deliciously sugar-filled dessert, like bread pudding. My husband loves making big breakfasts consisting of pancakes, bacon, eggs...the works. 
This is a picture of our Thanksgiving buffet. There is an inset picture of the back of the house. I cannot imagine having to clean a home this size. We like our small house. :)

I can only tell you that we all gained so much weight in just a few days. We have a few athletic or fitness-minded family members, so there were quite a number of daily walks around the neighborhood. We actually had a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot. And still we all gained a lot of weight.

Turkey Trot!  This is less than half of our group.

I'm the only one who homeschools my children.  So I thought my kids would not be able to get any schoolwork done. I was wrong, though. One of my sisters' kids are in private school, but they're very disciplined and did schoolwork each day. The house also had an office, so the kids and I would work in the office a couple of hours. Fortunately, I brought two of our laptops. So while I worked, Samantha also did her 4th grade curriculum online. It helped that my kids were not the only ones doing school and that I, too, had work to do so I could supervise them.

Even my teens got a little bit of schoolwork done. You can see Noah doing his homework while listening to music. I don't know how he does that!
And Amber is doing her math online. She's got a dry erase board where she does her math problems.

Isn't this an amazing chair?! We wanted to take it home. No-can-do. We looked it up online and it costs more than our couch!

All in all a great time was had by all. Most of us stayed up late and woke up early, trying to fit in as much time together as possible. Saying good-bye was difficult, but hopefully we'll do this again next year. Some live as far as Nebraska, Texas and Costa Rica. Only one of my sisters lives in Florida, but still a 4-hour drive.

We loved the time we had together and the legacy we're leaving our children of love for family.