Kelly Family Reunion part one

The week of Easter all the Kelly's I mean ALL the Kelly's got together for a much needed family reunion!  I think it has been almost seven years that everyone has been under the same roof at the same time.  I married into an incredible family and am always reminded of it when we are together.  The first morning we went to the temple.  We were only missing Tyler (he was helping out at a surgery) but beautiful Tess came anyways!  Oh and Ashley wasn't there because for one she is not married yet and two someone had to watch all the hundreds of kids! ;)  She will be a GREAT mom someday.

 

The cousins played so well together.  I mean REALLY played well together.  I don't think there was one meltdown.  The only meltdowns was from the adults when all 35 of us were having our pictures taken as a family;)  Luckily our photographer Cheryl Haertling is kind of related to us and I think still likes us and hopefully got a nap after the 3 hour photo session!  Can't wait to see how the pictures turned out.  Here are some fun pictures of all the cousins playing together during the week.  Evelyn was in heaven!

Kelly, Miriam, Evelyn, Eliza, Kassidy, and Sam

This is Todd and Jane!  Cousins born one week apart!

Mark is showing the girls a live bee he caught!  No big deal ;)

The entire time I thought he was showing them some kind of bug...never thought it was a live bee!

These girls were all born within the same month!  They play so cute together and all have fun personalities!

Daryl and Tyler made a swing one afternoon.  It had quite a few "modifications" when certain plans kept not working out.  But in the end it turned out awesome!  The kids loved it.

Daryl and Tyler building the swing

Daryl passing the safety inspection on the swing.  I think it passed!

Evelyn trying it out

The Kelly's are very competitive game players.  One game we played was an adult game of kickball.  The teams were Kelly "blood siblings" versus "married into Kelly's."  There were plenty of competitive throw backs.  I am pretty sure Daryl's Dad even pushed me just so he could get on first with out me getting him out!  It was all in good fun and I think we were mostly laughing the whole time.  So since there are so many Kelly boys my team was all girls and one boy, (Collin was taking a nap).  But anyways we lost by one point in the overtime round.  I think there are definitely going to be more kickball challenges.  Another game we played that Kortneigh planned was the "brown paper bag game"  You basically have to pick up the bag with your mouth without letting anything on your body touch the floor but your feet.  Each round you cut the bag shorter and shorter.  It got to the point when the final three had to put there feet on shallow bins because the bag was cut down to nothing!  Here is what the game looked like:

It was actually hilariously fun and everyone participated so a good game to play with a large group.  The boys had a long rope from the swing project that they played tug-a-war with which afterwards we used as a long jump rope with I think maybe up to five jumping at one time!  Man...with the combined kickball and jump roping games it all took me back in time a decade and then some!

Also during the week Ryan and Melissa had everyone over to their house for dinner.  Melissa always cooks the best food and my kids always have so much fun at their house.