Family Reunion 2012-Bear Lake!!

Thursday ended up be a cool and rainy day. We did some car swapping and Karen's family and ours caravaned up to Garden City, UT in the pouring rain. Karen was in charge of organizing reunion and had found a fabulous cabin for all 35 or so of us to stay in! It was super nice, plenty of space- sleeping, hanging out and eating. I would say there were only 2 very minor downsides-no wifi and a very steep, downhill driveway. But all in all, everyone loved it!!

Everyone from my parents down were able to make it except for 2 (one nephew, Spencer, who is currently serving a mission and one niece, Erika, who is doing an internship in Japan for the summer). It's hard to summarize how awesome the reunion was and we took a lot of pictures to try to help us remember everything. So I'll break it down this way: Family time, swimming, the lake, the games, jet skiing, crafts, hiking and family pictures.

Family time: We collectively live between Southern Cali, Central Cali, Northern Cali, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and New Mexico. There are my parents, 6 sibling, 6 spouses and 22 grandkids. There was a lot a fun & visiting.

Swimming: The cabin was in located in a community that had a pool several times throughout our stay we took advantage of the pool!

 
The Lake: We were staying in Garden City, UT which I thought was called Bear Lake (apparently it's not!). On Friday we all loaded up and headed to North Shore and staked out our spot of beach. The beach was awesome-soft sand, shallow water for a LONG ways and boating. My dad brought down a ski boat and they tried to get some skiers up and then near the end of the day my nephew convinced an unknown family to "lend" us their water banana!! We all got LOTS of sun (and sunburn) but had a great time!

 

The Games: My sister planned an awesome event call the Toy Story Olympics! We were divided into 4 teams, not by family, and played relay games! Great fun!!

Jet Skiing: On Saturday a group headed back to the lake to do more skiing but had some boat trouble, like 2 hours of trying to get the boat started and it never working! So, the group ended up renting a jet ski and having a blast!

Crafts: My sister was in charge of crafts and one she decided to do was a "hands on" event! We all did our handprints on a white sheet and then our names were written by them. It will get turned into a quilt for my parents.

 

Hiking: The group that didn't go boating/jet skiing went on a hike. It was touted on a website as "The Switzerland of Utah". While it was very pretty, it didn't feel the need to sing Edelweiss! We did find a really cool "L" shaped tree as well as the Linderberry tree, which was 5 trees grown together.

Family Pictures: I was put in charge of getting shirts printed for the reunion. On Friday night they got passed out and everyone was told to wear them the following day for family pictures!!

 

 

 

 

In sibling age order:

 

Sisters & mom:

I love spending time with my family and going to these reunions really makes me wonder what it would be like if we all lived close to one another and could do more together. Would we continue to enjoy one anothers company or would we end up never getting together. But since we're not going anywhere and neither is anyone else we'll stick with our biennial family reunions and just live it up when we see each other!