The past fews days provided the opportunity for lots of family activities with my side of the family. My sister Amy and her family were in town visiting from Maryland which was fun since we don't get to see them very often. This was also Bridget's first time meeting her cousins Sophie and Hugh. My sister Jill and her family also came from Arizona for a visit.
Thursday night we got together at the Weight's house for dinner. The Weights are just like family to us because of the many holidays we spent together over the years while they were our neighbors in Great Falls. It's always good to see them even though it's not as often anymore.
My brother-in-law Stuart's birthday was the day before, so we put a few candles in the pie and sang to him.
The kids had a great time playing together.
My brother-in-law Rob thought it would be a great idea to have an ice cream eating contest, but my brother-in-law Matt was the only one who took him up on it. Rob may have won, but it should be noted that Matt had his appendix out just the week before and that Rob was eating fat free frozen yogurt and Matt was eating ice cream.
One of the big reasons we were all together was my youngest sister Jessica's graduation from BYU on Friday morning. She's the 6th of the 7 Wilkinson children to graduate from BYU. Too bad she has to finish Fall semester before she really graduates. :-) You can see that trying to get kids to pose for a picture was no easy task after they'd just finished sitting through the graduation.
Yay for Jessica!
All the cousins together (minus one that was just born a couple of days before).
Friday night I was too busy playing hostess for our big family BBQ to take any pictures. This shindig included extended family, so we had over 30 people in our backyard. Thankfully the rain held off because it would have been more than a little cozy if we'd had to move indoors.
It was fun to see everyone even if the visit was short, and it's just too bad we're so spread across the country that we don't have opportunities to be together very often.
Sadly, the elephant in this collage was the only one we got to see because the other elephant had just had a baby a couple of weeks before, and neither were out for public viewing yet. My favorite was the family of orangutans mostly because they're kind of cute and more lively than many of the animals there. Nate really like the silverback gorillas even though they're a little scary. And Bridget loved the penguins. She loved watching them swim in the water, and wasn't so happy when we decided to move on to other animals.
Top left: Checking out a tortoise. Top right: Nate and Bridget enjoying the penguins. Bottom left: Bridget wanting to get closer to the peacock. Bottom right: Bridget and me in front of the giraffes.
I just liked this shot of one of the adult giraffes with the baby giraffe. The baby is doing some sort of contortionist thing with its neck.
