The Fam. Reunion

In July my husbands family had a family reunion. I was a little hesitant when I heard the location, Hurricane Utah, but it honestly turned out to be so much fun. I can't wait to do it all over again.

The only bad part about the trip was that I couldn't take this sweet girl with us. When I was packing up the car I went in the house to get another load and came back out to this. She had jumped in the trunk of the car and she WAS NOT getting out. She wanted to come! She went and played at her BFF's house Zoe, so she had her own fun, but I can't wait until we go on a trip when we can take Scout with us.

We stayed at this great house on the Sand Hallow golf course (that didn't allow dogs). The place was miraculously large enough to hold all 30 some odd of us . . .

. . . and our shoes. This pile grew at least 3x this size by the end of the trip.

One of the main reasons we headed up to southern Utah was for the Shakespearean Festival up at Southern Utah University. Some people saw a number of shows but Jeff and I just saw Le Miserables. They put on an awesome show with a lot of talented actors and singers. Very glad we saw it.

The house was near Sand Hallow Reservoir (no one was unlucky enough to get Swimmers Itch, even though there was a high risk at the time). Most the "kids" headed to the Sand Hallow every day to play, and play we DID!



Here is my sis-in-law Amanda with the wake board. (I wont embarrass anyone by posting pictures of them while they were wake boarding. Don't get me wrong, we have some pretty talented wake boarders in the family, but there is always that look of concentration or fear of falling on wake boarders faces that isn't the most flattering.)

We also did our fair share of para-sailing. Yep, Uncle Kim also has a para-sailing kite in his bag of tricks. I've done this several times on vacations elsewhere so I didn't go up this trip, but lots of family enjoyed the ride.



I think this is my sis-in law Natalie going in for a dip, whether she wanted to or not- haha.

This was more my speed this vacation, I stole some time away from the "kids" and went tubing. I hadn't done this for ages and it was pretty awesome. I snuck a ride in right before the boat ran out of gas. We had to get towed in, which was kind of fun in its own right. Pictured are two of Jeff's cousins. Spending time with family like them is what really made the whole week great!

Sorry for the Instagram Pic



Besides my quick tubing trip this is what I spent most of my time doing at Sand Hallow, cliff jumping! Honestly, it wasn't as fun as I remember, I think I am getting old or something. But it was still a bunch of fun. Some of the cousins got to show off their swimming and diving skills making up all kinds of dives off the rocks.

We even snuck in some hiking. Here the family is up at one of my favorite places, Zion National Park, earlier in the week before I drove up.



This is our cousin Nathan jumping into a small pool up at the Red Cliffs hike I took them on later on in the week. Nathan just got back from his LDS mission. It was so great to see him again. He is pretty much awesome sauce, as you can clearly see from this picture.



Jeff, of course, took his normal role in the family and was a bit of a dork. Seriously, why did he put mud on his face? Not really sure, but he is super cute anyway. Spending time with him and his family this week was so relaxing and joyous. It made me think about what the next life must be like, where we get to spend more time with our family, then say, with strangers at work that we've never met before we got the job. We were both just in the best mood the whole time because we were having fun and surrounded by people that we love and who love us. I don't know if there can be a better feeling then that.

This is a pretty good picture of the whole crew. Not sure if we ever got more people then this all together for one event. This is at the Red Cliffs hike trail head.

On our last full day of the reunion we went to the St. George temple. I did a session with some of the other adults, while Jeff went and did baptisms for the dead with the younger cousins. There were a number of family names that we did the work for in the temple that day, so I'm sure we had even more family in attendance at the reunion that are not pictured ;)

Lastly, we took over a local burger joint for lunch. After that different families started to head out at different times. Jeff and I left the next day, did some killer shopping in St. George and visited with my grandparents (who took us out for an awesome lunch and we had a great visit).

 It was an awesome family get together. I loved getting to spend time with all of them. I hope that my family can get it together and have a reunion sometime soon too. It makes me just want to go hang out with our family all the time. Jeff and I are so blessed to have amazing family so close on all sides!