We had a fun time at the beginning of August having a family reunion up at Bear Lake! We've gone up there the last 3 years and it looks like we'll be going again next summer. The weather was a little cooler this year but it worked out pretty well. We had to change our dates and venue at the last minute so we could make it to our nephew's wedding. I'm grateful it worked out. We had all our children and grandchildren there except our son's family who just moved far away across the ocean. There were 22 of us.
After a yummy dinner of tortellini and French bread, we started Monday evening with icebreaker games planned by Lincoln and MiCayla: telephone charades, murder with a wink (like tag with winking), and another game played in a circle with everyone's eyes closed. My knee was hurting a lot so I didn't participate much but enjoyed watching and holding grandchildren.
The next day we had delicious pancakes with lots of different syrups and then we headed out to the beach. We took the "lily pad" that came with the house--a big floating rectangle that lots of people could get on. We also brought several kayaks, a shade, and fortifying sack lunches. We rented a jet ski for four hours which was quite popular. The weather cooperated and a few people got some sunburns. Talmage's was particularly impressive.
Dinner that night was fish tacos which were quite good with a killer sauce and the best black beans. Then we had our family trivia game. The questions (made by me) were a little challenging but everyone nailed the category of finishing the movie quotes:
"Imagine the most horrible thing you can think of..." (and multiply it by 6!)
"Waahoo! I'm the first one on the new road!" (It rides purty smooth.)
"I've got my wedding to arrange..." (my wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I'm swamped!)
We also celebrated Cole's first birthday!
Wednesday morning was delicious breakfast casserole. Afterwards we took a family picture in our T-shirts.
This was the grandchildren with Oma and Opa plus Lincoln because Addy didn't want to be anywhere else but in her father's arms.
Then we had our Undokai courtesy of Everett who is carrying on the tradition Michelle started about 20 years ago in the Hansen family. He did a good job and, of course, my team won. :)
Yellow team looking very friendly and not quite as ruthless:
Red team: (much more ruthless)
Somewhere in between those two extremes was the blue team:
I have a few videos from the Undokai:
Afterwards we played 9-square, courtesy of Bruce and Michelle's set.
For lunch we had a yummy taco salad. That afternoon, Mindy led a craft, also courtesy of Michelle who gave us the idea and some of the pieces. It was spinners with a marble under a CD and colored paper on top.
We also did a treasure hunt. David and Stephanie sponsored an escape room.
For dinner we had hamburgers and hot dogs and watermelon plus oven-baked s'mores--it was raining outside so we couldn't build a fire, sadly.
That night we visited the hot tub and played card games.
The next morning we packed up and drove away. Scott and I went straight to Clyn's wedding at the Oquirrh Mountain temple. It rained the entire first hour as we drove through the spectacular Logan Canyon.
Favorites:
Giant lilypad: Jay, Felix, Katie
Pickle ball: Sallie
Beach: Jan, Susanna, Talmage, Lincoln
Minecraft: Camille
Undokai: MiCayla, Katie
Games in the evening without kids: David, Stephanie
Kayaking: Stephanie
Family Trivia: Everett
Jet ski: Caroline
Craft: Mindy, Addy
Park: Max
I think Scott and I liked all of it!
And here is our time-capsule video:
It was a great reunion and we plan to get together again in two years!
The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better. Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended. As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving. Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges. It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" . The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...
For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and Kurt made Cafe Rio which was delicious. On Thursday afternoon, we had free time at the lake. Heidi and Aaron rented a pontoon boat and took people out for rides. This was very popular. Some of us went on the kayaks and/or swimming or just hung out on the beach.
Recently we had another Hansen Family Reunion at Bear Lake. We've been having these destination reunions since 2008. There were about 70 of us in attendance. Bruce and Michelle organized the activities and did a good job. I enjoyed myself! Hopefully lots of other people did too. We showed up on Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a taco salad dinner, served by Neil and Kristie's family. We also worked on two mixer games: a word search with the names of all 100 Hansen family members as well as a Bingo card that involved finding people with different attributes like recent high school graduation, birthdays in certain months, etc. The word search was definitely the most popular. Also popular was playing Nine-Square and Sandy Pickle (a cross between pickle ball and badminton). Thys and Katrina might have won! After dinner, we had an FHE activity/lesson. Liz had made a book with stories of the first ancestors to join the church. She had selected different stories for us to act out in g...
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