Family Family Everywhere!

As most of you know, Mike and I both come from very large families. Eleven kids in my family and eight kids in Mike's. We had reunions with both sides back to back this July, so there has been lots and lots of cousins and siblings and fun. I already showed a few pics of the reunion my side had in Soda Springs.

The next week we were up at Bear Lake for the reunion Mike's side has. I've mentioned before that we grew up spending a lot of time at my grandma's little lake side trailer at Bear Lake. We had the place til I was in college, so Bear Lake has always been a significant place for me, and I love that Mike's parents have had a few reunions up there so that my kids are also developing happy Bear Lake memories.

The lodge Mike's parents rent is incredible and makes the reunion so nice. Usually it is a little stressful trying to fit and sleep kids with so many family members around, but this lodge has 15 bedrooms! It's just a walk down to the beach and so amazingly fun. I don't have the energy to decide which of the many photos from the trip to put on my blog, so they will just go in my photo album, however, all this reunioning made me want to put up some pictures of our families from the reunions.

I stole the ones of my family off of my sister Shannon's camera. I stole the one of Mike's family off of his brother Jeff's camera, and the ones of the couples in Mike's family were all taken by his sister-in-law Rhonda. Thanks all of you for sharing your photos!

Starting off with the folks on my side.

My parents with ten of their eleven kids. (Amy left a day early and missed picture time. Booo).
Back row: Me, Chris, John, Mark, Aaron, Rob, Tony.
Front row: Kathy, my dad, my mom, Shannon, Megan.
All of us with our spouses. Once again no Amy and Alan. We didn't even attempt a full one with grandkids.

We are forever taking sister pics. This time, we thought, "Why not brothers for heaven's sake?" And so we did.

Now on to Mike's side of the family.

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Oh, speaking of Mike, here he is with his own little family.
And, with his wife -- that would be me. Oh, look how much we like each other. And how big his arms are.Here is Mike's entire family. I tried to crop it so you'd be more likely to see individual faces, but there are just a whole lot of people.Here are individual shots of the couples in the family. Starting with Mike's parents then in order from oldest to youngest (well, Mike isn't in these ones since I just showed us -- but he's second to youngest). Anyway, the pics go (with his actual sibling listed first out of each couple): parents Alma and Gayle, Becky and Troy, Jeff and Elyse, Kimberly and Tom, Marnie and John, Dave and Jaime, Lisa and Dennis, Greg and Rhonda.

Anyway, it is great how much everyone gets along and how much our siblings all love to be together.