Highlights From the Family Reunion

As I'd mentioned a few days ago, last weekend we spent with family at a reunion.

This particular reunion was my mother's mother's family. It was a celebration of my great-grandparent's hundredth birthdays. My great-grandpa's birthday was last year, and my great-grandma's birthday is next year. So, they chose the year between to celebrate. Both of them have already passed on, but I'm sure they were there in spirit.

One of the most exciting things that happened, was that my sister gave us her old Nikon. It is an awesome camera! It isn't brand new, in fact she's giving it to us because they're upgrading to a new one, but it is a much nicer camera than any I have ever owned before. We were super excited to try it out. We have been so blessed as we've been trying to live within our budget. This is just one of the incredible blessings we have received. Thanks, sis!

I haven't been camping in a while, so I'd forgotten how hard it can be to sleep in a tent. Kevin did really well, but I had a really hard time sleeping the first night. It was pretty cold, and I was worried about Kevin getting too chilled. However, the second night was much better.

On the first evening, we had a good time pulling kids around in handcarts and taking pictures of deer. There were quite a few close to camp, and they really didn't seem to mind when we got pretty close.

My sister, who had to come home off her mission for medical reasons, was there, and we decided to get in the handcart and let Grig pull us. Both of us got into the back of the cart, and before we knew what was happening, the cart began to tip backward with both of us in it!

We ended up with our backs in the dirt. People came running over to see if we were okay. My sister, who was still struggling to walk because of pain in her knee, hurt her back a bit. I was fine. It was pretty funny. Lesson learned: don't put all your weight in the back of a handcart without a counter-balance on the front.

This is how Kevin fell asleep that night. It was pretty adorable.

The next day, we helped make breakfast. While we were waiting for clean up, my sister braided my hair while we were exploring the area with my father. That was really nice of her.

After that, my sister, Grig, my grandpa, and I went fishing. We saw some cougar tracks and some raccoon tracks while we were trying to find a good spot.

Racoon back paw print

Cougar track (toes are pointed down)

That was neat. For a while, I was the only one who had any luck. I caught two rainbow trout, but they were fairly small. We were going to stop fishing at noon, and just as noon hit, a fish struck my grandpa's line. It turned out to be twice as large as any fish I had caught. That was a nice end to that fishing trip.

However, as we cleaned up, we hit a snag. We had walked a fair distance to get to the spot where we went fishing, and we decided instead of walking all the way back, we would just go straight up the mountain to the road. My poor sister with her bum knee and my grandpa had a harder time getting up the mountain. We eventually made it, but it was quite the hike. Both of them did really well. I gave my sister a piggy-back ride back to the truck once we reached the road.

We spent the rest of the day talking to family. We ended up taking a nap with Kevin and when we woke up, everyone was swimming. We got ready and started driving down to meet with everyone, but when we got there, they were all leaving. So, we ended up getting the whole reservoir to ourselves. The person who gave us a ride wanted to return too, so we told them that we'd just walk back.

 We were walking back to the camping ground and we were almost there when my parents drove up. People had been worried about us, and so they came to make sure we wouldn't miss dinner. Kevin was pretty happy that we didn't.

After dinner, there was a presentation. We learned how to access stories about our grandparents online and my parents showed us a video that they had edited of my great-grandparents giving them a tour of their homestead. They did a fantastic job.

We had a good night's sleep. The next morning we went back out to go fishing again. Grig had the largest catch of the day. Here's what he caught:

There were garter snakes everywhere. We had a good time chasing them. Grig also took this phenomenal picture of a giant ichneumon wasp. It's pretty neat. 

We didn't have any luck fishing, and after we finished we packed up and went home. We had a good time, and it was really nice to be outdoors with family.