the more, the merrier Christmas...

so my uncle kyle, aunt trudy & cousin madison were visiting from missouri. then my uncle curt & cousins elijah & levi arrived from new hampshire! this was the first time that all of us cousins have ever been ALL together!! it was a FuLL & CraZY house!

while everybody was in town, we made a couple of trips to the boulder field. this is a wooded area with LotS of HuGE rocks to climb -- and i mean big kids (adults!) like to climb on these too! when curt & kyle were younger, this area was secluded & less well-known, but they enjoyed going there. now the city of hoover has decided to preserve it for future generations.

uncle kyle had just returned from his army sapper training (congratulations, kyle!!!) so he was letting elijah use his climbing gear. i tried to get in on the action, too. but i had a lot of fun watching elijah go up so high! (actually, i had a fit & mommy & i had to return to the car so i did not get to see the climbs with ropes. but you can see elijah freestyle climbing in the photo below.)

and remember i mentioned that we planned to make gingerbread houses with my cousins? madison, levi & i had so much fun doing this. actually the icing did not act as a very strong glue, so we had some struggles. but mostly, i enjoyed eating the decorations.

here is the house that levi built. pretty impressive, right?