Grandma Swindler's Birthday Celebration - Part 1 of 2

My Grandma Swindler is turning 80 years old this year, so the entire extended family descended on Oberlin and Norton, Kansas to celebrate the event.  The first afternoon that we arrived, we checked into the first real hotel in Norton, which in the end proved to be quite an enjoyable place to stay.  It was about dinner time and we headed down to meet some of the family at the only Mexican restaurant in town.  It was great to see some of my cousins and their kids and some aunts and uncles that had arrived.  The highlight of the evening was probably when they served our kids "orange juice" which turned out to be Fanta not actual juice to our great surprise.  Interestingly, our kids neglected to let us in on this fact until they had downed more than half of there glasses.  The first stop the next morning was over in Oberlin with a party at Grandma's Play Garage. She has all kinds of old trackers and cars there and the kids above were psyched to jump right on them.

It was Easter weekend so we put on an Easter Egg hunt in the garage with each kid having their own names written on the eggs.  They would only take those ones, which allowed everyone to find the same number of eggs regardless of age.  Above you can see Tara helping Gage hunt his down.

Apparently the family continues to grow quite prolifically as evidenced by the vast numbers in the next generation above.  They were listening fairly well to the instructions given to them by one of the Aunts.

Gavin and Gage are having a blast with all of the cousins and the extended family. 

This is a picture of my Grandpa Swindler.  He passed away when I was in middle school, but I still have a huge number of great memories of him and this picture captures a lot of the essence of those memories.  I used to sleep in a small room upstairs in my Grandparent's house when we stayed with them where his hunting bow and arrows were hung on the wall.  I wish my kids would have been able to know him, but at least I have many stories to share with them.