Good Times

I am one of those people who L-O-V-E family reunions. I love being with my family. My brother lives in Omaha and my sister lives near Provo, so it's alway a treat when we are able to all be together. My parents live less that an hour away, so we are able to see them often. Anyway, the party started last Friday (July 25). That's when my sister and I arrived at my parent's house. My brother got there Thurs night.

On Saturday my brother's wife (Sandy), Cory's sister (Felicia), and a different sister's husband (Jay)-yeah, that's confusing...sorry- all competed in the Spudman triathalon in Burley. My heroes. I signed up to do it once, and backed out. Too scary for me. Anyway, they all did awesome. After that was a family reunion for my Mom's side of the family. Just a little 1-day, potluck, come-and visit-all-day type of thing. It was fun to see so many people I hadn't seen in a long time.

On Sunday, we skipped church. We used the excuse that getting 18 people ready for church with only 1 bathroom was near impossible. My sister brought stuff to do a mentos geyser. When you drop a roll of mentos in a 2 liter bottle of diet cola, it shoots up really high into the sky. It was awesome! Each kid got to do one.

We made up for skipping church when on Monday when we went to the Temple open house. It was our second time. It's absolutely beautiful. The kids think it's awesome, too, and were excited to show their cousins. We took some pics of each family after the tour, then headed to our house for lunch.

After lunch, we all packed up and headed to Island Park for the remainder of the time we would be together. We have a Blad family cabin up there that Cory helped his Dad build. It is absolute Heaven up there. So peaceful, and sooooo much more room than my parents have at their house. (3 bathrooms-yay!) It's a fabulous get-a-way. I'm excited that when we move, we will be so much closer. Anyway, we had lots of fun, going to Johnny Sack's cabin, Mesa Falls, Buffalo Springs, Yellowstone, Sawtelle Peak, Big Spring.....I didn't go to all the places. Too hard with baby. And even if I didn't have a baby, I wouldn't have gone to Sawtelle Peak. Too scary for me. It's the top of a mountain in Island Park, and it is home to a radar thing for airplanes. The road up is switchback all the way (can you say carsick?). Cory said Alex was really concerned about his little brother the whole time...kept yelling at him to get away from the edge. At least I know he's looking out for him, right? Anyway, I guess the cool thing about it is you can see a 360 degree panoramic view encompasing 3 states. Awesome. I'm completely happy to view that from the pictures Cory took.

My brother had to end their vacation earlier than expected when they recieved some bad news from home, and had to leave pretty quickly. My kids were pretty bummed about that. They were sad to see their cousins leave. But they still had 1 cousin left, and even though he's only 2 years old, they love to play with him. Drew is a hoot. And I think he had fun playing with them. My sister said that when they got home, he wouldn't get out of the car. He wanted to go to "Abby's house" (that's how he would say Gabby) I loved that whenever he saw Cory he'd say "Unca Ory?, Unca Ory?" He didn't ever want anything, just to say Cory's name....so cute!

I hope they all had as much fun as we did. The kids were pretty sad to see people leave, and tears were shed each time someone left. We decided to stay one more day and go back to Yellowstone on Thursday, then came home Friday. Friday happened to be Cory's birthday. Poor guy. He spent it cleaning the cabin and driving home. We did stop in IF and took the kids to see the house we want to buy. They we stopped in Poky and ate a birthday dinner at Texas Roadhouse (yum!). Then we stopped one last time at my parent's house. They had very graciously made Cory a birthday cake, since we were traveling all day. Finally made it home late Friday night. I did absolutely nothing the next day. Nada. But Cory went to Costco and surprised me the book. You know the one. Breaking Dawn, the last in the Twilight series. All I have to say about that is I agree with the title of chapter nine...sure as heck didn't see that one coming!