New Years with the May Clan. Part 1

We went up to my brother's house in Newton, Utah for a May Family New Years Reunion. We hadn't all been together as a family in almost 4 years. I was excited and nervous at the same time. We (I have 6 siblings) were going to be ALL staying in the same house, along with 13 grandchildren (all under the age of 7). So let's recap. That equals 7 May kids, 6 spouses, 13 cousins, and 2 grandparents which equals======28 bodies under the same roof! All eating, sleeping, playing, using the bathrooms, and chillaxin'. Who wouldn't be scared heading into that!

I am happy to report that it was AWESOME!!! The cousins were all so well behaved and such a joy to be around. It was fun to watch them all play and get reacquainted. They ran around like a little flock of sea gulls, or was it a heard of elephants??? The whole trip was so fun, thanks for hosting Josh & Kristene, you guys are so wonderful and patient. Thanks for opening your house up to us. And a special thanks goes to your kids who shared everything they had with us. Bedrooms, toys, snow clothes and dress clothes! WOW!

The present game did not disappoint either! My family doesn't exchange gifts in a traditional way, when we're together we play the present game and sometimes it gets down right nasty!!! It seems that the last few times we've played that Taylor has been the entertainment, and this year was no exception. He opened not only 1 girlie gift, but 2!!! so funny, lucky for him Cesar felt bad for him and helped him out in the end.

Some of the fun things we did were hang out together, play games, watch movies, Trent & Cesar went skiing, we had lunch with Trent's brother Troy's family, a group of us including Trent & Luke got to go see a USU vs WYO basketball game, we went the the movie theater, the kids went sledding, the ladies went out for dinner and shopping, the guys went shooting, duck hunting and of course we ate! Here, in the next 3 posts are a lot of photos from our trip. None taken by me, my camera would have stayed in it's case unless my sister hadn't pulled it out to play with. So the following pics were taken by my sister Alissa, thanks for sharing!

Arriving

We left for Utah on Monday morning as soon as Trent was done working. We drove allllll day, thankfully the kids were wonderful. We stopped in American Fork to have dinner with Uncle Jerry and to pick up Trent's 50 gallon fish tank that has been in Jerry's storage shed since we lived there (Thanks Jerry!!). It was so nice to get caught up and visit with Jerry, it's been a long time and I haven't been the best letter writer.

Back in the car we piled and traveled up to Roy, UT to sleep at Trent's brother, Travis' place. Travis and Angela are always so good to put us up when we're driving through. We arrived around 10pm, let our kids run a little and then everyone went to bed. Everyone except me that is... Trent and Carley were snoring so loud that I couldn't sleep. In fact, I'm surprised that they didn't keep the entire house awake....it was like a freight train kept circling the house. Finally I got so fed up that I fled to the couch....sleep found me at last.

This morning we woke up and Uncle Travis made us french toast! We let the kids play with their cousins Kendrick and Cohen for a few hours before we made the final push up to Newton, UT. (Almost all of the pictures I'll be posting for this trip were taken by my sister, Alissa. I was busy working and chasing kids, so I let her take my camera over and I'm glad she did b/c otherwise I wouldn't have had any shots at all, so thanks Ali!)

When you're driving up to Josh/Kristene's house their is this sign. It's got to be the craziest sign ever. This really is how the road goes at this intersection, but to see it in a sign is just weird. So I had to have a picture of it.
Visiting Utah makes me miss the mountains. They are so gorgeous no matter what time of year you visit, but this year they were absolutely stunning! We saw snow about 3 hours North of Las Vegas and Emry went nutz! She wanted us to pull the car over so she could make a snow angel...she didn't care that she was also in her pajamas, we kept on driving. She did make one at Uncle Travis' house, she even went outside barefoot, she's one crazy girl! By the time we reached my brother's place, Luke & Emry were delirious with excitement for the snow. Before we were even inside the house they were asking to go out and play.

These photos were taken about 30 minutes after we arrived at Josh's house. Luke & Emry were supposed to be inside visiting with Trent's parents who'd driven down from Idaho to see us, but they were being too obnoxious so out they went. The snow was deep!

Here are Harry, Luke, Emry, Daphne & Addi

Emry sledding, she had so much fun, she dreamed about sledding for the next few nights!