When you take our four families with all their children throw them into one room to celebrate birthdays, what do you get?

A party!

But I digress.  The other day I came down and found many of my children busily putting candy into eggs.

Our church is preparing for an Easter egg hunt in a few weeks and Kelly volunteered the kids to put candy in all of the eggs.  I wish I would have thought to take a picture of the amazing number of eggs that they filled (and there are still more that need to be done!), but we dropped them off at church this morning.   I am always so appreciative of the willingness all these kids have to jump in and get a project completed!

Now, back to the party.

As many of you know, there are so many birthday parties within Kelly’s family we decided many years ago to do periodic parties and cover everyone who has a birthday over a certain time frame.  This weekend was the party for children with birthdays between December and March.  Kelly put together a tasty burrito meal that had a lot of festive colors!  Made me think it was Cinco De Mayo!

Much like during Thanksgiving and Christmas, there was a kid’s table…

… and an adult’s table (Or two.  Or three).

This one is just because Riley is so darn cute!

After dinner, it was time for each child with a birthday to open their presents.  This hasn’t always been the most comfortable position for some of these kids to be in as they are the center of attention in a large group of people!  But, they are with family and the anxiety continues to decrease as they get older and the feel accepted by everyone around them.

Everyone enjoys giving Jessie a hard time because, well, she is a little crazy and fun!  Her aunt keeps threatening to give her very personal presents and for a minute Jessie thought she had followed through in front of everyone!  She was much relieved to find out that it was only rubber bands for a Rainbow Loom!

Even Hershey got a little love.

And Ali, as usual, gave shoulder massages to those requested them.

After the gifts were opened, Kelly had everyone go downstairs and we had a Pictionary contest.

There were many very valuable prizes.  OK, moderately valuable. OK, they were trinkets.  But even so, the competition began to heat up.

It was a head-to-head contest with the room divided in half and the person who was drawing got the gift if their side answered correctly.

Some of the questions required a certain level of explanation for those that do not speak English as a first language.

And others have been here long enough to know what exactly what the word meant that they had to draw.

Even some of the adults took a turn on the white board!

And a few people went twice!

I grew up a long distance from my extended family and it is so rewarding for me to see my children be able to enjoy the unconditional love that comes with being surrounded by a large group of people that love you and enjoy spending time with you!

Cameron