Her children threw her a private party at a Hawaiian restaurant, complete with DJ and Karaoke.  The kids had a blast.  Rich’s mom has a total of *19 grandchildren!*the two oldest grandchildren – Tony and Phillip – are missing from this photo, and we have two “extras” here who are a great-neice and great-nephew.  But the rest are all grandchildren

During the festivities, our two youngest came down with a fever and were not happy.  Rich and I spent a lot of party time cuddling and trying to sooth cranky little ones.

There’s always something, you know.  Rich and I are used to things going wrong and most of the time just roll with it and manage to have a good time, anyway.

One thing we love about traveling, even if it’s just two or three hours away from home:  HOTELS!  All of our kids love staying in hotels.  Rich and I like it, too.  There’s just something that we love about being all crammed into a small living space for a couple of days.  Sharing a bathroom with nine kids.  No privacy.  Yea, that’s fun for us.  Seriously, it is!  I’m not joking.  Of course, once we hit the 3rd day we are all ready to kill each other…but by that time it’s usually time to go home, anyway.

In the above photo two of the kids aren’t in the picture…but yea, this is what a hotel room full of children looks like.  This is our reality.  It’s FUN, I swear it is!  Doesn’t Alex (far left) look thrilled?

There is a lot of doubling (tripling!) up in the beds.  No one gets their own bed; not even mom & dad.   We always get two adjoining rooms, each with two queen beds.  This time we even asked for a roll-away bed (for Tony)  but he didn’t want to sleep in it.  I swear this is the truth: he wanted to sleep in the bed with his two brothers.  They just all flop like that.  I have no idea why.

Yep, we love hotel stays.  While getting to our room one day, we stopped to take this photo in the casino.  Aria and Andrew….they weren’t in the picture-taking mood.

In this picture, can you tell who didn’t want to join in the group photo?

Oh, and I bet you are wondering what we all look like in an elevator…

Now, just picture me in there, too…right next to Afton.

We certainly fill up an elevator!

The kids were a bit disappointed in the pool at our hotel.  One of the kids took a look at it and said, “What is this?  This is the size of a backyard pool!” (spoiled, spoiled resort kids! Hotels just aren’t good enough for them anymore.)   Okay, I’ll admit that It was a very dinky little pool.  But it was pretty, and it was clean.  And there was hardly anyone there, so most of the time we had the entire pool to ourselves.  Nice!  We made the best of it.

Summer is here…and I’m love’n it!