Cousins galore!Partly because I'm still unloading the gazillion things the girls got in their multiple party bags and tripping over stuffed animals (I wish someone had taken a photo of Auntie Dottie buying a cart full of 60 stuffed penguins!) but I have a few more party pics to share. I actually have 200 pics but I'll only share a few!
Some of the best are of the kids' faces when the characters came in. Our wonderful party planners (my mom and aunts!) rented costumes of Rudolph, Frosty, Spongebob, an elf, and a penguin and some of the "big cousins" were willing to sneak out and dress up (I think they enjoyed it actually. Especially Diane who as the penguin learned the Happy Feet dance and donned her tap shoes to dance for the kids. It was fabulous!) for the little ones. Earlier there were games for the kids and plenty of music for singing and dancing. How could we not have fun?
Our family did this type of party over 30 years ago when we "big cousins" were small. Few of us remember it though and the photos actually show some rather frightening characters (phew, good to see how much the costume industry has improved in those years!) and it has become a bit of a family joke. Did that party really happen? We see the pictures but funny none of us remember it . . . So it was decided last year that the new generation of Coleman cousins (31 families have descended from the 10 Coleman siblings. Only some of them were able to attend else we would have had to rent a convention center!) needed to recreate the event.
My girls really enjoyed the whole thing start to finish and I was thrilled to see them playing so well with cousins they don't often see or some they had never met before! The only disappointing part was tearing them away from it all. Brenna loves being with Nolan and Johnny and also discovered a great friendship with Jenna. Molly and Ariel were tearing up the dance floor and couldn't understand why they couldn't have a playdate the next day. The nearly 500 miles between us is really a problem. I hope as the girls get older, they can use email and phones to stay close to their cousins. I was blessed to grow up near mine (geographically and emotionally and nearly a dozen of us were born between 1970-1972) and I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. I can only hope the same for my girls . . .
Molly and Rudolph (Shhh! It's really cousin Lisa's boyfriend Angelo. She wouldn't pose for pictures with any characters so we had to tell her who this one really was. Can you tell she's excited? She has a big 'ol crush on him. :) (see the 8/22 entry)Then there's Brenna and Santa
and then the girls with the ever-popular Uncle Don and Auntie Kristin
Cutie Cousins!
3 comments:
What a wonderful, wonderful time all of you had! This will definitely stay with them for years to come.
Fabulous! That looks like so much fun. Incredible how many cousins you have (and even more so that you can't remember your own party 30 years ago. LOL!)
So you don't do this every year? Be careful or you'll be doing it every other or every three.
It sounds like a wonderful party. I miss our big family reunions that I went to in Iowa when I was a kid.
I LOVE the girls dresses.
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