Christmas in Oregon

Every year for as long as I can remember, I have traveled down to Oregon with my family during Christmastime to get together with my mom's parents, brother and sister and their families. When I was a young kid, there were nine of us cousins and we had lots of fun together (two more cousins came quite a bit later). We would often gather at my uncle and aunt's farm to eat dinner, open presents and play, play, play! I have many, many fond memories of those Christmas get-togethers.

Since then, we still continue to meet together, but things have changed. Most of us eleven grandkids have gotten married and have kids of our own. We have grown from a group of 19 to a whopping crowd of 41 - and it continues to grow! And even though it is rare that the whole group can come, we are still far too big for a house so we now we meet at my uncle's church. Instead of a sit-down Christmas dinner, we have a potluck. Instead of gifts for everyone, we have a white elephant gift exchange. Instead of playing in the barn and watching movies until late at night, we cousins help in the kitchen, sit around talking, watch after our little ones who run all over the fellowship hall, play a board/card game when the aunts agree to look after the little ones, and head home early before our youngsters have any more meltdowns. =)

Loading up our food plates!

Abby saying hi to her Great-Grandma, the matriarch of this 41-person family! (At every gathering I am reminded how much I miss my Grandpa being with us, but it is wonderful to see the legacy of his and my grandma's marriage resulting in this ever-growing family.)

The gift exchange - our circle of chairs is so large now that you can barely see what gifts people are opening on the other side!


Abby and me waiting for our numbers to come up during the gift exchange.


Abby giving her second-cousin Priscilla a kiss (they are 10 days apart in age).


Uncle Paul, my Dad, Uncle Jim and my brother Dave drinking coffee and yakking (contrary to what my relatives will tell you, my dad and brother are not short - both are around 6' - my uncles are just abnormally tall, somewhere around 6'4'' or so!).


Kevin and cousin Jesse playing a card game.

One advantage of having it at a church is that there are plenty of nursery toys for the little ones to try out and lots of room to run and play:

Abby trying out the slide with her older second-cousins (Abby cried and cried when she had to leave this slide when it was time to go!).

Abby especially enjoyed getting pushed around in this car.

And Kevin and I will be looking for this Fisher Price boat on Craig's List and at garage sales, as a boat seems to be a perfect fit for our family! =)

Yes, things have definitely changed. And although in some ways I long for the old days when I was the carefree kid running around with my little cousins, it is still lots of fun to get together and I hope we continue this tradition no matter how old we get or how big our family gets!