Family Reunions

Over the last couple of weekends, we've had a couple family reunions. A lot happened, so I'll just share some of the best stories.

Playing at the sand dunes

During the first reunion, I took Kevin and his cousin out on a canoe ride. I was on one end, and they were on the other end. We made it all the way through the channels to the second pond, but on our way back, we got lodged against the side of the reeds.

Just as I pushed away, my two passengers shifted and the canoe tipped over, dumping all three of us into the water. It wasn’t that deep. Kevin's cousin could easily touch the ground, but he started freaking out. He grabbed my elbow and dangled from it, all the while yelling, “I don’t want the leeches to get me!”

It was pretty hilarious, though I was trying to get the canoe turned back over and dumped out. So, I told him, “You’ve got to let go, so I can get us out of the water.” Meanwhile, Kevin was just floating in his life jacket with this look that said, “Why is he freaking out? Should I be freaking out too?”

We eventually got back in the boat and everyone was fine. I bruised my foot a little, and had a small leech on my leg, but I flicked it off. I paddled us back to shore, and we all got out. It was pretty entertaining.

Visiting Mesa Falls, Arkhon was there too, he was just being walked by a cousin

Between the two reunions, we stayed in Idaho, and I had two new nieces born during the week. That was pretty exciting. We also watched fireworks and played with cousins. It was cheaper for us to take the whole week as vacation time than to drive back and forth between the two states, so we stayed and hung out.

4th of July Fireworks

On the 5th of July, I needed some alone time. So, I went outside to think for a while. I was outside when a car came driving up. Thinking that it would just drive by, I ducked under one of the pine trees, because I didn’t want to look like a creeper just standing in front of the house. However, instead of driving past, the car stopped and parked. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed under the tree. I was wearing dark clothes, so I knew I couldn't be seen. I just thought it would be super awkward if I popped out, so I didn't move.

Playing at Grandpa's school

The driver turned out to be my younger brother, and he was confused when he saw a female figure walk toward the front door and disappear. When he got inside, he asked who had just come in, and they told him that no one had. He was pretty sure he had seen a ghost. That was pretty funny. We got things cleared up, but we all had a pretty good laugh.

During the second reunion, Kevin was playing with his cousin. Randomly he walked up to him and said, "Zazzy Poopy Sucker." He probably thought it was hilarious, but instead of laughing, his cousin reared back and punched him in the gut. Both of them were 4, and he wasn't seriously hurt, but he was pretty sad. We talked to his cousin about it, and he said, "But...but...he wasn't being appropriate."
Then we talked about how even if he wan't being appropriate, you still shouldn't punch someone in the gut. We asked him to come tell us next time if Kevin was being inappropriate instead of hitting him. He agreed to do so.

We probably are terrible people for this, but we thought it was pretty funny.

Kevin with his great-grandma 

We had a really great time, and it was nice to get away for a while. Things might be happening finally with foster care. The final paperwork has finally gotten to the office, so hopefully we'll know more soon.

MM: Tithing and a Family Reunion

I mentioned in my last blog entry that we were pretty stressed about money, but that we had faith and paid our tithing to the Lord. I forgot to mention that Grig's employment offers unemployment on weeks off. We thought we were going to get an unemployment check from a previous week off, but when Grig went in to talk to them, they told him that he wasn’t going to get that money after all. They said you had to have an unpaid week (which we had already had) and then, if you had another week of unemployment in the same quarter, you would get paid for it. However, they said that the last week was in a different quarter and we wouldn’t be paid for it. That was very frustrating. We felt like the job opportunity was the answer to that, and we'd be able to pay our bills after all. We felt exceedingly blessed and felt that this was the answer to our prayers.

A week and a half ago, we went to go on my mother's family reunion. We were going to carpool, but then Grig got work off on Thursday too, and he got home too late to drive with those we were going to carpool with. So, some kind family members gave us some gas money. That was our second blessing of tithing.

The reunion was a lot of fun, and I had the opportunity to write a Reader’s Theater for it.

It went really well, and all my actors did a great job. That was one of my highlights of the reunion.

Another point was when all 60 of us were singing together. That was really nice. The harmonies were awesome, and the Spirit was really strong. I’m so grateful I was able to go to the reunion. There was animal taxidermy everywhere, and the kids really enjoyed looking at those.

Kevin on a moose (statue).

We had a couple funny stories. The first night we arrived, we were told that we were sleeping upstairs with Amy and Ryan. When we got upstairs we were a bit confused. There were two couches, a television, and two twin beds. They may have even had slightly less width than twin beds. They were pretty small. Grig and I looked around, and decided that we were supposed to use one of the twin beds. That night, all three of us, including Kevin, slept on the tiny bed. It was a tight squeeze, and the whole night my arm dangled off the side. We slept alright, though the next morning my arm was numb.

The view of the lake from our cabin

When we went down for breakfast, we talked to everyone for a while, and then we were talking about how we slept. We were trying not to complain, because we were glad to have a bed at all, but it came out that we’d been really squished all night. Then someone asked about the hide-away beds.

Confused, I didn’t know what they were talking about. It was then revealed that the couches each had a queen-sized hide-away bed inside. We’d slept on the twin beds for no good reason!

It was pretty funny.

The next funny thing that happened was at Bear Lake. Kevin had been pretty happy until we took him into deeper water, then he got cold and grumpy. After cuddling for a while, he allowed me to bury him in sand up to his neck. He was pretty happy, until I spotted something.

Kevin and friends

There was a large spider on top of the sand on his leg. It had at least an inch long body, and was huge! I pointed it out to Kevin. Usually he loves spiders and cries when we leave them, so I was expecting a positive reaction.

Unfortunately, at the moment that Kevin spotted the spider, it took off running toward his face! He screamed and exploded out of the sand.

He was sad for a while after that, and then he recovered and played in the water again. By the end, he didn’t want to leave.


On the last full day, we went on a hike. Grig and I ended up far behind everyone else.

Grig took this picture. Neat, right?

Family pic

As we neared the end of our walk, we heard a very distinctive sound. Happily, we soon spotted a nearby raven. Grig loves ravens, and that made the whole hike worth it for him.

We had a great time at the reunion, and it was kind of sad to leave.

We got home from the reunion, and checked our mail as we packed to leave the next day for work in Idaho. To our surprise, we found two checks in the mail from Grig’s parents. Here was the third blessing from tithing. They told Grig that they had felt impressed to send the money.

Then, when we went to look at our bank account, we found that there was another large sum of money that had been put into our checking. We didn’t know what it was from, but when we looked it up, we saw that it was the unemployment check that they told Grig he wouldn’t be receiving. The fourth blessing of tithing.

When all was said and done, we not only had enough for all of our bills, but we were going to be building back up our savings by the end of the month. That was a huge blessing. Tithing works, and it is amazing. Indeed it is as the Lord said in Malachi 3:10:

 10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. 

We worked all week in Idaho, and had a great time working with family and we're grateful that they were kind enough to pay us for our efforts. I have a testimony of tithing, and I'm so grateful for the blessings that we were given.

Once Upon a Reunion

From the 1st to the 4th of August, we had a family reunion with my dad's side of the family.

The theme was Once Upon a Time, and we had a lot of really fun activities.

We had the reunion at Bear Lake, and aside from the fact that the owners sat on their garage porch and watched us the whole time, we had a great time!

The first night, we just ate dinner and talked to people. Kevin had a great time playing on the playground with his cousins. They also had swords made out of water noodles and PVC pipes. Kevin really enjoyed those the whole reunion. We also went and got one of their famous raspberry shakes. They were pretty good, but I'm not a big fan of the seeds.

Saturday, we went to Bear Lake and swam. My siblings had pooled their funds together to rent a jet ski, so we took turns riding it onto the lake. It was a little bit scary (the waves were super choppy) and it was my first time driving one, so it took a little while to get used to. One of the strangest things was when I released the gas, the jet ski instantly dropped down to a stop. That took some getting used to.

Kevin swam with us for a while, but then he got cold, so he just wanted to play on the beach. There were these shallow pools of water on the beach, and Kevin loved to lay in them belly-down and splash in the water. He was super cute. The water was much warmer in the pools as well. We stopped to eat lunch while we played, and Kevin didn't want to get out of the water to eat. A couple of times, he would have a cheetoh in his hands, and he would slide into the water, soaking his cheetoh in the filthy, seagull poop water, and then eat it. That was pretty gross.

At least our kid has a great immune system.

We also spent some time working on a sand castle. It turned out pretty good!

After we finished swimming we headed home. We all got a little sunburned, but we had applied a lot of sunscreen, so it wasn't too bad. That night we jousted. We stood on shaky stumps and tried to push each other off of them with extra long water noodles. That was really fun. I won some, and lost some.

The next day we went to church and then came back and had a family meeting where we talked about family history and played a game of cousin jeopardy. It was pretty fun. Then our grandma talked to us about the importance of staying united as a family and staying faithful to the Lord.

We spent the rest of the day working on stop-motion videos, writing letters to missionaries, talking, and playing games. Grig really enjoyed capture-the-flag that they played after dark. I had eaten too much dinner, and had no desire to run. I talked to my siblings and cousins instead.

As part of the festivities, we had been asked to write the story of how we met in fairy-tale form. I'll have to post our story, because we were quite proud of how our story turned out.

The next day we cleaned up and then drove home.

It was a fantastic reunion.

(I'm going to post this now, and add more pictures later when I have more time. I've got to go to work now.)