Family Reunion Day 2

Luke sleeping all by his lonesome...or is he?

The cabins we stayed at had 2 twin beds per cabin. My parents thought the kids could just sleep on the floor. To this germ-a-phob mom, that didn't really cut it. We just pushed the beds together and all crammed in there. It actually wasn't too bad.

The walls were paper thin, so we could hear our partying neighbors come in late in the night. We ran out as fast as we could when their partying ways caught up with them in the morning. Yuck! I didn't need that memory.

This elk was hanging out near our cabin when we came back from breakfast.

August 3rd

Day two was a road trip out of Yellowstone and up and over Bear Tooth Pass into Red Lodge, Montana. It was a long day in the car, but we had fun torturing waitresses in small diners who weren't prepared for our crowd. At one point, due to road construction we had to stop and wait for the pilot car that was about 20 minutes out. Rather than complain, we all just left our cars in the road and got out and explored the tiny town we were in. Olivia had fun at the park, swinging on the swings and she didn't want to get back in the car, but once the workers hollered out that the pilot car was a couple of minutes out, we all scrambled back to the cars to get the kids belted in.

We stopped to see a mama bear and her cub. Grandpa drove on with all the kids. Too bad, it's not often you get to see a real bear in the wild.

Tower Falls

We had to stop for a baby blowout so we got to see a little of Tower Falls. Grandpa was rushing us through to get to Bear Tooth Pass. It was the point of the reunion.

Here's where we caught up with the van, they were taking a hike while waiting for us, (studying wildflowers).

Bear Tooth Pass

A Family Reunion

This year my parents were very generous to treat the whole family to a family reunion. We met in Star Valley, Wyoming on Saturday, August 1st. That night we had a "All in one Birthday" celebration. Since we're all scattered here and there and we don't get to celebrate our birthday's together anymore, this was our celebration. The Parental's drew names for the kids and the grand kids a few weeks before, and then we were all to buy a book for whomever we got. It was a fun idea. Then our parents gave us all matching T-shirts with the numeral order of when we came into the family. Dad was 1, mom-2, I'm the second oldest so I was 4, Ryan-9, Luke-12, and Olivia-18. All together there are 21 of us now. Sunday, we left for church to start out our trip, unfortunately with 21 people and 2 bathrooms, we came close, but it proved to be an impossible task (especially when the estimated time to get there was given as 5 minutes, and it took 12). So we left from there to Yellowstone Park. It was so amazingly beautiful, the Teton mountains and the broad expanse. Oh, I felt like I was back in heaven. Below our family is posing for a shot at the Old Faithful lodge.

Olivia is trying to share some candy with Luke while we wait for Old Faithful.

Of course words and pictures can never describe how amazing Old Faithful truly is.

This is how we traveled with this many people and kids. We had my parents pickup with 5 people in it, my parents car with 4 people in it, then a 15 passenger van with 11 people in it. Bet you wish you were in the van too, huh? Really, it wasn't that bad. The kids did great trapped in there, there were very few fights, and those were stopped quickly by separating siblings.

One activity we stopped to do was skip rocks. That's always been something fun our family loves to do. So at a reunion a skipping rocks contest is a given. Too bad the little biting flies invited themselves to the party. We were just looking for rocks, and then came the "everybody run and keep your mouths closed" warning. There were swarms of flies. But a storm blew up and blew the flies away, the wind also blew over some trees where we were parked, so we did run back and got out of there as quickly as we could.

How do you pass the time when your in the car all day? Give Olivia a camera and she'll get some great shots for you.

After we got checked in to our cabins in Yellowstone Park, we went to visit the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Of course when the kids see rocks they have to start climbing.

While Ryan and I were posing for this shot, Luke and Olivia went ahead with the others. When we caught up, Shanie, my sister-in-law told me that we were very lucky to still have Luke. In her words he tried to hurdle the rock barrier between the path and the canyon. They don't call it the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone for naught- it is an extremely steep deep canyon. Had he gone over the waist high barrier, it would have been disastrous. Luke claims he was "just jumping on the rocks." Seriously? Did the high altitude wipe out some brain cells? He still doesn't get that he was in danger by doing that.

A shot of my parents. Brad and Marie.

A Vist with Esther

Me and Esther

Olivia was so happy all day, but you know that tiredness kicks in instantly.

We finally made it to my friend Esther's house. I was so excited to see her. Olivia and Esther's 3 year old, Jessica, played like they were best friends since birth. And Luke, who was being a little shy to begin with, once Jason asked if he wanted to play a video game, I never saw him for the rest of the day. They played video games, then he and Ryan (Esther's other son) were playing outside, and Luke was climbing trees and doing all he could to get a broken arm. Luckily we left without any major injuries.

Esther is such a wonderful friend and I was so happy to be able to see her again. The wonderful thing about our friendship is that even if we haven't seen each other or talked to each other in years, when you do reconnect it's like you were never apart. Do you have friends like that? If you do, your a lucky person. I know I'm lucky because I have so many friends like this all over the place.

Visits with Grandma and Grandpa

After leaving our friend's in Shelley, we were going to go visit another one of my best friend's from college, but Luke ended up getting sick. We'll spare the details about that, but I will say that I think the apricots he ate off the tree caught up with him...thank goodness it was very short lived. But since we didn't know that at the time, we went to Grandma's and Grandpa's so we wouldn't get our friend's sick. Grandpa took us out for yummy Chinese food, after we left Grandpa got his customary toothpick to clean his teeth. When he came back Luke was laughing at him because of his shirt. Take a close look, somehow that happened all on it's own. Luke will now put toothpicks in his shirt to be like Grandpa.

Here the kids are in front of Grandma and Grandpa's condo. They had just been eating ice cream and they looked so cute I just had to take a picture. The silly kids shoved the rest of the ice cream in just before I could get the shot.

Fun with our Shelley, ID friends

Caleb, Luke, Sam, Mariann, and Olivia. Guess who's taking the picture? We are enjoying some delicious Reed's Dairy ice cream.

We were lucky to go and stay with our friends in Shelley, ID. We rode the shuttle bus up to Blackfoot and Mariann, Caleb, and Sam met us there. We went home with them and had so much fun. We got to go swimming, play at their house, and we can't get together and not have a trip to Leo's Place (a place kind of like Chuck E Cheese). We also got to go to Reed's Dairy, (the best milk and ice cream you'll ever find), went to the movies, had a BBQ, visit the Idaho Falls Temple Ground's and so much more. It's amazing that we really only got to spend 1 day with them. We had so much fun and it was so sad to say goodbye. But since Matt's favorite team is the Detroit Lion's (and you have to be a loyal fan to keep saying that after last year's season) we think they need to come visit us here SOON! Thanks for all the fun Matt and Mariann!

Hot Days, Water Days, Days with Friends

Luke picked up their soccer ball to play with and it had the biggest snail he had ever seen on it. Julie's Mother-in-law told him to kill it- he was shocked! He did realize how much damage they cause to their trees and such. Speaking of trees, they had an Apricot Tree, with lots of ripe fruit on it. Luke was in heaven climbing the tree and eating lots of Apricots. Livvy got to go out with Juli to their HUGE garden and pick carrots out of the ground, wash them and eat them. Yummo!

We were so excited because we were able to get together with some of our bestest and greatest friends from Kalamazoo in Utah. Juli, Paul, Max and Addison. While Paul was working, Juli and I took the kids to the Gateway Mall and let the kids play in the water park. It was such a hot day, a great day to play in the water. When our friends were in Kalamazoo, we used to get together the first Sunday of the month and eat Sushi. It became Luke's favorite. Therefore when he heard we were getting together in Utah, he immediately asked for Sushi. Paul and Juli came through, and Luke and Olivia were in heaven. It was such a fun day. I keep trying to get Juli and Paul to move back here, anybody know of a job we can entice them back here with?

It was fun catching up with Juli, and seeing how much Max and Addison have grown (especially Addison). It was sad to leave them, but a few days later they came over to my brother's house and ran through the sprinklers with us. We love having great friends!