Skip to main content

Reunion Time

 
Summers are reunion time in our family.  This year our Kansas cousins arranged for us to all meet up at the Heber Valley Camp on July 3rd and 4th.  We enjoyed a challenge course with a zip line, a nice fire pit with plenty of firewood, great bathrooms, cabins to sleep in, places to hike and some time on the lake in canoes.  And good meals with lots of watermelon!
 
This is where we got our instructions for the zip line.
 

Mindy screamed her way down the zip line.  I'm glad she did it.

Susanna's a pro from doing it at girls' camp the previous year.

Camille wanted to do the zip line and she got up the pole a few feet but she wasn't quite strong enough.

Doing this took a little more strength than I thought it would, but I made it!
 
I was in charge of Friday night dinner and I served pork burritos and watermelon.  I think we had watermelon at almost every meal.

The older kids and teens enjoyed non-stop card games in the pavilion.  You can see the fruits of the parade we enjoyed on July 4th with lots of candy thrown out by the missionary volunteers who paraded by in decorated ATV's.

The younger kids enjoyed the fire pit and games involving the log benches.  We made banana boats on Friday night in the fire.


 
This is our two with a cousin on the hike to Missionary Overlook.  Mt. Timpanogos is in the background.

The lake is not large (more like a pond) but it was still fun.  Unfortunately we were only able to make reservations for 16 of us (our group had 40 plus people) so there was a lot of competition for those 16 spots.

Because we had few adults and many children who wanted to canoe, I took out three small girls in my canoe.  The canoes were lightweight so it wasn't hard to get us around.

On Sunday, we met at my sister's house and had dinner together there.  Here is my brother and grandmother talking together.

This is the beginning of a group picture taken on my sister's front porch.  Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the final product.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Visiting Susquehanna: The Priesthood Restoration Site

On our way home from Palmyra, we decided to go a couple of hours out of our way to visit the recently opened Priesthood Restoration Site along the Susquehanna River.  This is where we believe that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the keys of the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist which gave them the authority to baptize.  This site also has the restored Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home where Joseph and Emma lived for a year as well as the home where Joseph and Emma lived on their own. We spent a couple of hours there and I wouldn't have minded a few more minutes but we had a long way to go that night.  It's a beautiful setting, very much in rural Pennsylvania.  However, on the day we were there, cars at a racetrack nearby were detracting from the peace and quiet.  I'm guessing that's not as big of a problem on weekdays. The Hale Family was quite well-off for their day so their home was probably nicely decorated with wallpaper and carpet. ...

Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This is a juvenile fiction book about a young girl named Melody with severe cerebral palsy.  Her body doesn't allow her to feed herself, speak, or do much at all.  She's very intelligent with a photographic memory but she can't really communicate.  Finally, in 5th grade, she gets a "Medi-Talker" which is a computer that speaks what she types in.  Finally she has a voice. This book explores what it is like to be severely physically disabled but not mentally disabled. It seems like one of the most frustrating of all scenarios.  She is completely aware of all the cruelty (subtle and otherwise) that her classmates inflict on her because they don't really want to include her in their activities.  One of the saddest moments in the book comes when she realizes that every one of her special ed classmates is kind, where the "normal" ones are not.  Who really has the worse disability? The book was a quick read and fairly enjoyable.  Wha...

Nauvoo Pageant!

I have been a negligent blogger this last month.  My reason is that we have been super busy.  At the end of July, we went to the Nauvoo Pageant.  We were able to participate once again in the Gold Cast like we did in 2007 and 2014.  We picked up our daughter at the end of her cross country camp in Price, Utah on our way out of town.  Then we drove to our friends' house in Golden, Colorado near Denver to stay the night.  It was fun to reconnect if only briefly.  The next night we were in Lawrence, Kansas, visiting my brother and sister-in-law and their family.  That was also fun but short.  We left the next morning, attending nearby church before taking off.  We arrived in Nauvoo around 4pm with just enough time to have dinner at our cabin before going to our orientation at the pageant building. The next day we went to the pageant building to get our costumes and to learn how to do our hair in the 1840 styles. ...