fun SUNDAY, THANKSGIVING & CHRISTMAS DINNER'S. . . . . . .

I love to have big family dinners in our home.  I know that it can't be every Sunday like the good ole days, but once a month or every other month would be fine as well.  On these Sunday's we  celebrate all the birthday's that have happened in the family since our last Sunday Dinner.  I like to put up pictures of the Birthday Guys & Gals in our family even if some of them can't be with us due to their schedules or living too far away. (Sometime's the siblings will call an out of State sib just to "nay-nay-nay-nay-nay-nay" them.) At these dinners it's fun to all sit around afterwards and share news in the family and just let everybody know how important, loved and special they are.  It's a good time to also share news of any family Missionary's out. We have the heads of the family report on all member's within their family (sometimes having the child in that family tell what they got rewarded for or not :). Always including the kids "Poppy & Nonny's" if they are up for all the noise associated with our family gatherings, (Just ask our Danny. he's been known to sneak home for a little respite due to an on coming migraine attack.  He's been known to say that nobody missed him anyway but I always do.)
 



  

     



Some of these big family dinner's are Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner's.  Whatever the reason's they are very special to Jim and I and the "Grand's" ask for them more than the parents do.  We love our children and their families to be close to each other and feel that one way we have achieved this goal is to make sure they are together as much as possible.  At one of these gatherings during the Christmas Holiday after dinner we divided all the boys up on one team and all the girls up on another and gave them different things to make a manger scene out of and then put it all together to make the final family manger scene.  They all had so much fun and I still have the manger scene and put it out on display every Christmas along with my store bought ones I've collected.  It brings me the most joy to look at. (Remembering all enjoying each other, eating more candy than using on their assigned part of the project, all working together, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, spouses to create what the Christmas Season is all about.)

      


I wanted to have a family game night with a pot luck included and  Amy wanted it held out in Gilbert so all of us have to travel for a change.  So I made up "GAME CLOTHS" for all the tables and a sack of prizes, and running game tablets for future game nights and we all had so much fun.  The prizes were in a grab bag so what you got, you got and then after everybody got their team or individual prizes I had us go around in the circle and either keep our prize or trade it with somebody else.  Danny made it funnier because he took off his shoes and put on his big toes the little girls socks he got from the grab bag and when Ruby said she wanted them he said "no", that he really liked them and wiggled his toes at her which made her come out with the "Ruby laugh" which always make  everybody else laugh.

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