A graduation day surprise!

As many know, our daughter Kaylee is now less than 2 weeks away from completing bootcamp and graduating a United States Marine.  Of course she wants to see us all at the graduation, but she has no idea that we are bringing EVERYBODY!  All 18 kids, 2 grand-kids, one son-in-law, the 3 young men we've taken in who have basically become family and 3 significant others.  We will be renting a second 15 passenger van and hauling a trailer just so that the whole gang can be there.  We have a great trip planned that will be like the ones we used to take, cross-country.  Two days down, staying in 3 great villas in Hilton Head, going to family day and the graduation from there and afterwards, heading north to Gatlinburg to spend 2 nights in a wonderful cabin that can sleep the whole gang!  Not only treating the family to a good time, but crossing off one of Christi’s bucket list items of staying in a cabin in the Smoky mountains.  It will be totally complete when she gets to see the sunrise while having the morning coffee. 

Top that off with a big spaghetti dinner at the cabin (Kaylee’s favorite) and we will have a trip for the books for sure!

Unbeknownst to Kaylee, the whole thing will be filmed for the French TV channel M6 and their show “66 minutes”.  They will be with the family for the whole trip and will capture the whole thing.  It will be part of a special they are doing on large American families.

I can’t give my kids a lot of fancy experiences, but they can always look back to those times when they were on TV and smile.  We always have a good time with the film crews and the kids have a lot of fun trying to out-do each other’s funny.

 I think it will add an extra fun twist to this already awesome event!