The beauty of big families

I'm very late on posting about Easter, but better late than never.... for Easter break we went for a week to visit my sister, her husband, and their 12 kids. Yes, my sister has 12 children. People are always shocked when I say that, and I guess really big families are pretty rare these days, but my sister and her husband happily have 12 children and their family is absolutely beautiful. I wish we lived closer and could see them more often, because visiting with them is always wonderful.

One of the best things about a big family is that there is always something to do and someone with whom to play. Belle and Bug were in Heaven having 12 cousins to play with all day. Especially since my sister has 2 little girls almost the exact same ages as Belle and Bug, so the 4 little toddler girls had a blast playing house, "cooking", and pushing each other on the swings. It was so cute to watch them all play together and help each other collect Easter eggs.

We had perfect weather almost the whole week (after the first day when it snowed?!?), and we had so much fun. The kids played on the trampoline and the swing set, and the family enjoyed a backyard soccer game (I was very bummed that I was too pregnant to participate in this).

We went to tour a distillery, which the Officer and my BIL thoroughly enjoyed.

We had an evening by the fire with s'mores, and one day the Officer and I were able to sneak away for an afternoon date.

We celebrated the Triduum at their beautiful Church, and had a delicious Easter lunch followed by an exciting Easter egg hunt. Another perk about a big family is that the teenagers got to mastermind the egg hunt- they filled the 200 eggs (I can't remember the final count, but it was outrageous!), and then the teenagers had fun hiding them (one egg was even attached to a fishing rod and my nephew pulled it away from his brother across the yard when he tried to get it)- my sister and I got to just come out and enjoy watching the fun without doing any of the work!

Their whole family was so generous, and gave up beds for us, so that we had 2 whole rooms to ourselves (super sleeper Bug had her own room in a house with 18 people in it!). The family worked together to make yummy dinners every night, and it always looked so easy for everyone to just take different jobs and have a big dinner ready that could feed all of us. I also always love getting parenting advice from my sister and BIL, who are definitely expert parents at this point. They make raising kids look so easy- don't get me wrong they make so many sacrifices for their children every day. They have chosen having children over other things, and of course that means work but wow you can see it so clearly in their lives that choosing children has also meant so much joy! I'm so grateful that they let us come stay with them for the week and add to their fun =)

We had a wonderful Easter!