An Epic Day!

So what happens when two big families meet up at the park for the day? It can be a complete takeover.  In the short video below you will notice the school kids on a retreat just watching in fascination at the two families playing friendly family football.

 

But first let us start at the beginning . . . A few of my kiddos didn't get to join the family for the penance service earlier in the week.  They decided to go to Confession on Saturday night.  While in line they met a family "with a ton of kids".  Being that we are also a family with a ton of kids Pooker and Goobers waited until they had finished with Confession and asked to talk with the family.  They learned that these kids were from a family of 12.  With mom and dad, the younger 11 were visiting from Colorado in their RV.  They came for Thanksgiving and they were stranded when their RV conked out.  When my girls learned that they had walked about 3 miles to Mass and Confession they offered to bring the family van back to drive them home.  Pooker and I had the honor of talking with them as we drove them back to their aunts house.  We learned that they were hoping to get back to Colorado soon, but if they were still around we could get our families together.  As The mom and I exchanged names and numbers I realized that there was something very familiar about this family.  They were heroes of ours.  They were that family . . . The Kellogg Family.   I had even lamented that we would never be as cool as this family back in February The RV Show 2013.   

So here we were at the park with this family and realizing that they were even more awesome in person. Two families full of kids just hanging out.  How cool is that?

 So this was also a Catholic homeschooling family. We have even more in common.  Now we have never been featured on a news cast or in the paper but we still have tons in common with our new friends. 

 J was in heaven as they had more boys than girls.  He organized a game of football boys vs. girls. At first we thought it was odd that he was the lone boy on the girls team until one of their boys pointed out that he liked being the quarterback for the girls and calling the shots. 

 What I loved was that each of these families have lots of older kiddos and lots of younger ones.  If you are from a big family you will have this talent as well.  The big kids can be playing their hearts out and be competing to the death, but they will pause and share the ball with a younger member of their team.  They might be tackling everything in site but somehow know when to stop themselves from toppling a smaller child. It is cool to watch. 

 

 

 

 So many cute kids all together.

 Our younger ones got along beautifully giving the moms a chance to share stories. 

 Beautiful made a friend for sure.

 I noticed that each of these kids help each other like my kiddos do. They all take care of the younger ones no matter what.  Look at the picture at the top of this post again.  You will see it in both families. 

These three will take over the world some day!

We invited the Bread Of Life group to join us last minute at the park.  I do forget how blessed I am living here in Houston to have this  wonderful Catholic Homeschool Support group.  3 families worked it into their schedule to join us.  We didn't get all in the pictures though, honestly I didn't think of it until we talked about heading home. 

 

As much as I don't like living in Houston I do love my friends and the homeschool group.  Thanks ladies for joining us at the park.  My Houston friends also enjoyed meeting our new friends from the Kellogg family.

The day wore the kiddos out.  The babies are not the only T family members that slept well that night.  (Or were sore the next morning.)

All kids love to climb rope towers no matter how old they are.

I love all these shots filled with new friends.

We don't know when we will see this family again.  We do know that we can't wait.  They were happy to have their RV fixed the next morning and they headed home to Colorado for Christmas but we were sad to not get another day of big family games.  We all look forward to our next meeting with these new friends.  The message is go to Confession, you meet the best people waiting in line!