Back to Tanglewood...I may have bitten off more than I could chew on this particular day. The ages spread from 5 to 15 and, since they are all related and have little groups close in age, they fight like siblings. Ok, they may fight a little more than siblings. To be fair, Kamesha did warn me that "they were bad" :) I borrowed my mother-in-law's minivan (I want one...ok, actually I want a church van but apparantly that is unreasonable) and Ed drove his Explorer. We roped his dad into coming out for a bit and helping with fishing...but he eventually escaped :)
A couple of things were working against me - 1. we forgot bocee (sp?) ball...which they love and kills a lot of time, 2. I did not know that paddle boats and canoes are not open until Memorial Day (Ed noted that they might have drown each other so this may not have been a bad thing) and 3. I failed to account for the various age groups/differences and plan simultaneous age appropriate activites....I naively thought "we could all play together" :)
There was some slight lunch-time drama when one of the littler boys was running to throw away his plate and busted his head. A huge goose egg came up immediately. I freaked out a little, but talked to my friend who is a nurse and she said that a goose egg is a good sign...if they ever hit like that and don't get one you need to go to doctor ASAP. She said he just needed to stay awake for 6 hours and to take him to the doctor if he was nauseous or weird-acting....I relayed all of this to his mom by phone and again when we dropped them off. Luckily he was fine...but he did hit his head as hard as I have seen a kid do that.
Anyway, overall we had a great day considering that it was the first time we have undertaken this many...the last time was 6 of them at Chuck-E-Cheese. Sidenote: Chuck-E-Cheese sells wine and beer. That's your first clue right there that it's a place that will make adults nuts. Maybe Tanglewood should look into that....? Despite their fighting, I think the kids mostly had a good time as apparantly some of them told one of the moms that "it was awesome". Mr. Craver took a few days to recover....
Next time I will plan a little better and/or possibly get the older ones one time and the younger ones another time. Ed is still swearing he's not doing eleven again....we'll see...but I will need to have a pretty solid plan if I am going to get him to help me.
Some pictures from the day ---
Ed's dad, Pat, putting a worm on the hook for Jordan:
Everyone playing together - a major plus of having eleven kids at once is you can effectively play kickball, volleyball and basketball...by effectively I mean you have enough people....not that it will in any way be orderly or not result in pushing and shoving for who goes first and eventually tears because "he called me a ball hog"..."don't call him a ball hog, it hurts his feelings"..."well, he is one and should stop being such a baby"...."that's not nice".... 
Kim and Sidney:
Kamesha and Hailey...who they all call Birdie....which Hailey hates and cried at least twice because "they're mean to me and no one will be my friend 'cause I'm too little..." She's five.
Ed baiting the hook for Chase:
Kamesha and Hailey...who they all call Birdie....which Hailey hates and cried at least twice because "they're mean to me and no one will be my friend 'cause I'm too little..." She's five.
Ed baiting the hook for Chase:
Who wants to come with us next time? Don't all answer at once......... :)
1 comment:
Jon does. Um, the fact that Ed ate a whole bag of cookies to drown his sorrows makes me think this was a little overwhelming.
Great pics! They at least look happy in the pictures.
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