Home Again, Home Again...

Gotta admit, there's nothing better than coming home and sleeping in your own bed after a week-long vacation.  We just returned from what will probably be an annual road trip to Washington to see Dan's family.  Here are some of the highlights:

1. Morgan's Birthday Party - Grandma Luci (Dan's mom) and Brazilian Tia Sussana

and cousin Gloucia did a beautiful job creating a butterfly themed first birthday for my

little Morgan Paige.  Dehydrated pineapple slices decorated the cake and looked like 

flowers (that was Leah's doing, my sister in law), hand rolled Brazilian candies, multi-

colored butterfly nets and suckers for the kids, and the prettiest butterfly things they 

made and hung from trees outside.  Awesome!

2. Sharing a house with 16 people - Okay first of all 8 of those people were under

the age of 6, secondly a lot of Portuguese was being spoken, and thirdly I crossed my 

fingers every time I opened a bedroom or a bathroom door, and hoped that somehow

I would avoid a potentially awkward situation.  But hey, it's all in the family, right?

3. Reuniting - All 6 of the Dennis & Luci Leaman offspring were together for the first time in almost 6 years.  Four brothers, two sisters, 6 spouses, and yes, 24 grand-

children.  Let's just say, it's a Latin thing. 

4. Old School Fireworks - You know how Cosby used to say "When I was a kid, I 

walked 5 miles in the snow?"  Well, when I was a kid, I watched my uncles practically

light themselves on fire in their driveways and my mom had anxiety attacks over all of

us kids playing with sparklers.  Over the past 10 years or so all the fireworks thing has

been made illegal in these here parts, but ahhh, not so in Puyallup, Washington.  My 

girls got to watch their uncles practically toast themselves and it was my turn to pray

when my girls got a hold of their first sparklers.  All hair still in tact, thank you.

5. Family - Seriously, and I'm not just kissing up because the only people that read this are my relatives, I've married in to a family full of great peeps.  They're all fun and so warm and welcoming and totally hard working servants for the Lord.  My nieces all  helped a ton with my kids.  They were all great. 

6. Two Big Announcements - Doug and Leah are now pregnant with their FIFTH baby, the first members of the family to break the 4 kids mark, we all bow down to them and pay homage to their courage (while simultaneously thinking, shwew, not us)

Also, good news, the oldest of the 24 grandkids, Beau has just gotten engaged to 

Ashley and will be finishing his senior year at Azusa next year.

7. Dan, My Hero - My husband drove 15 hours straight while we all slept and he didn't fall asleep.  Though when I heard drumming on the steering wheel, I knew it was a desperate attempt to stay awake, so I opened my eyes for a minute and said, "hey are

you awake?" He mumbled, "barely" and I fell back to sleep again.  Good times. 

All in all, it was a great trip, some tough moments with toddlers who hadn't enough nap time and were hyped up on ridiculous amounts of Otter Pops, but other than that, not too shabby.

*By the way, the picture of my sister Beth has nothing to do with my Washington trip, I just wanted everyone to check out her bicepts, because she's super ripped these days, and still single so if you know any conservative, godly men who like to work out (but in a "I'm into being healthy way", not "I'm super vain" way) and also they have to live locally because she's never allowed to move far away from me, just send them to Whole Foods, she's there a lot.