Keep our Family Weird: La Familia

How big is my family?...I seriously don’t know... I could count but now that even my nephews and nieces are getting married and having kids, I’d have to update the number too often. So I just stick to "Big" ; my family is "Big".

I wish we could all get together more often, but there’s just too many of us now, and on two different continents, so I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to have a family reunion with everybody there again.

Nonetheless we did have a family reunion this year and eventhough we were missing one of my siblings and his family and some nephews and nieces we still had a housefull of 30 people. Was it fun? Yes! Was is crazy? Yes!

But first of all let’s start with a few pictures from the beginning of the month... when we were only...oh...15 people at home?!...

Marie-Eve and me : She was just about to move to Munich. I know most people would think it’s sad their sister is moving to another country but she won’t be much farther than she was when she was in Paris. And now I get to visit her in Munich so yay for siblings moving to super cool places and cousins who will speak German!

With Coco and Marie : probably the only picture I have of the 3 of us!

Duck face out of pringles... funny kid!

Our neighbors went on vacation and asked us to take care of their kittens. It was so much fun. I wish we could do it more often. I don’t want to adopt an animal but animal-sitting is the best.

Celebrating Bastille Day, July the 14th, watching the parade on the Champs Elysée on TV. Josh was really into it.

Please don’t become a soldier will you?

One of the many Nintendo tournaments, with their cousins from Utah and from Valence.

A family soccer game. It was a dream come true for Josh.

And the pool :

William’s actual birthday :

Opening his dad’s present first thing

and Gramma’s card was a big hit!

blowing his candles for the 2nd time, on a cookie.

More presents around the breakfast table

Josh’s present : pokemon cards. That was a good choice.

Josh trying on the whole outfit

Then we had a picnic at the park with Emmanuelle, Auréa and some of William’s friends :

William and his friend from school.

Eating... we did a lot of that.

It was William’s birthday dinner so we had another cake and presents for our little Willerkiller.

I’m on a cruisade to break that thumb sucking habit, wish me luck!

Later in the week we planned a hike to the Lac du Crozet. The adults left early and the younger children and I were supposed to meet them halfway because it was a pretty long hike, but the adults were fast the kids and I only got to walk 15min before we met them! Bummer (for me, but I think the kids were kinda glad).

What we saw was gorgeous.

Since they didn’t get to hike much I took the children to Freydière to play around the lake.

The ducklings continue to grow...

And the next day the Tour de France was passing through Grenoble. It was a mountain stage, with an arrival at the top of Chamrousse (closest ski resort, about 30mn drive from us) at 1750m of altitude. That’s a 1500m elevation climb from Grenoble. I think they’re crazy, but I was so excited about seeing it.
I took all my nephews and nieces that were home with me and we headed to the top of the mountain using a different road than the one the Tour was taking. I knew there’d be road closures but I figured they’d be on the other side. Turns out they’d blocked the roads on our side too (but much higher thankfully). Still they stopped us around 1200m (altitude). I don’t know how far we were in distance but 550m is a pretty steep elevation climb to cover on foot. But I was so pumped about seeing it (and I was bummed I had missed the hike the day before) so I dragged all the kids with me for a 2hr hike!
Now they hate me. And what’s worse, we got lost in the forrest and never saw a bike! We heard plenty of helicopters though... According to my GPS we got really close but the trail had ended and we would have had to climb some sort of cliff.
My nephews and nieces might never want to go on a hike with me ever again (I had to bribe Josh and William to convince them to accompany me on another hike!)

Lesson learned : Next time the Tour comes close, don’t take the kids, and leave before the road closures.

trying to make the hike fun by looking for insects... works for a while but not for 2 hours...

Long faces. Good thing Mathias was there to help deal with the bad mood.

this boy knows how to make me smile

Le lac des Seiglières. A very pretty spot at least.

Wild flowers are so pretty

Sunday dinner, the youth were back from EFY, Rachel arrived : we’d reached full capacity. 30 people sleeping under the same roof!

Grand-Papa’s 70th birthday celebration

I stopped counting how many people we were at that point. It was a lot, and it was great. The weather was terrible though, so we had to eat inside, but it turned out to be just fine.

First, The beauty station :

Nicest teenagers entertaining their younger cousin :

The kids table (17 kids) : Joseph, Timothé, Benjamin, Auréa, William, Joshua, Dan, Evan, Mariel, Elise, Fanny, Charlotte, Ewen, Lise, Soline, Thomas et Gaspard.