Christmas with the Waltner's

On Christmas day we celebrated with my dad's side of the family.  We decided to have brunch and had our gathering at the Arboretum Visitors Center as we have grown so much as a family its nice to have one big room for us to all be together.  As always we had quite the spread of food to choose from for our brunch.  It was all delicious and very hard to not over eat!

After every one was done eating we continued on with our tradition of the same gift exchange we do with my mom's side of the family.  This family is a little better about stealing and it can get quite fun.

The little cousins had a blast running and chasing after each other.

The buffet line, with Uncle Loren deciding what he had room for yet! :)

Grama Verni and Baby Caleb

Jeff and Jacob

The desert and punch table!

Denver and Makenna seranading us, if you can call that seranading that is!

Denver and my cousin Ashley hit it off quite well this year!

My dad discussing, along with the other men what to pick or steal....I think there may be a discussion of a steal going on here with my dad and Evan if I remember correctly.

My dad finally choosing a gift....that ended up getting stolen from him!

Kenna and Caleb playing!

My mom has gifts for the little ones at each of our family Christmas' since they are too little to participate in our "game".  At this Christmas she gave them scrapbooks of the sale and history leading up to the sale.  These books will be coveted by them for life, I'm sure.

Denver opening his book under the table by Ashley.  He hid under the table during the majority of our gift game exchange as he was afraid some one would throw him out in a snow bank (thanks Uncle Aaron who scared him of this a different day and got it stuck in his head!).  Ashley was his guard! :)

The kids looking through their books that they absolutely loved and continue to today.

My Grandma with her 4 kids!

We were so blessed to be able to spend this Christmas together as a family with only my cousin Angie and her boyfriend missing. 

Waltner Family Camping Trip 2009

We had our annual Waltner family camping trip the last weekend in June this year. We went to Lake Vermillion and stayed Sunday through Tuesday. Does anyone know how much work it is or how much space it takes to pack up a 7 week old and a 19 month old!? Let's just say the pickup was packed full (I almost didn't leave room for Makenna!) and we had Evan's Grandpa's (thanks Grandpa Poots for letting us borrow it!) fishing boat and there was stuff in the boat too! We had a great time relaxing and spending time with family. Denver thought it was great to have so many different people to play with including his only 1st cousin Jacob!!

Playing with Jacob

These 2 had a blast on these pink inflatables that Great Aunt Carolyn got at a rummage sale. Yes, they're supposed to be for the water, but these 2 little ones sat on them, bounced on them, and played on them!

Our Group

We spent lots of time sitting around just visiting with each other and catching up on every one's lives. It's so nice to have some time like this as we don't get together as a big family often enough to be able to stay up-to-date on what every one's been doing.

Boys in the Pool

The little cousins had fun splashing in the pool. We weren't close to a beach so we had a little pool for the boys to play in so they could have some "water action" without having to go all the way to the lake. It's a lot of work to take 2 little ones down to the beach and this made it a lot easier!

Splashing is fun!

Even Grandma had some fun in the water with them! :)

There is NEVER a shortage of food! We split up the meals so each family is in charge of a meal and we are never short on food! We plan camping AROUND our meals! Ha, ha! Here's my Mom and Jeff working on the kabobs that Jeff and Kim brought for their meal. All of the food and snacks were delicious! Hair cut time! Yes, we even made time for a hair cut for Denver and my Dad while we were camping. Thanks a ton Kim...we loved it, he looked super cute, as always! Camp Fires We always have a camp fire every evening. It's so much fun sitting around the fire, making smores (this year we added a twist to the smores and made some of them with peanut butter cups...yummy! Thanks Shannon!), and telling stories. Angie's bear story just may have to become an annual thing as well as it was told for the 2nd time this year! She had a friend along this time though so she had proof she didn't make it up! :)

Our last day with the whole group there we had a tournament. We broke up into teams of 2 and then played bean bags, monkey balls (ladder ball, or whatever you call it), and bocce ball. This was a lot of fun, and ironically Evan and Kim were a team, and Jeff and I were a team, and Evan and Kim won and Jeff and I got 2nd!