Eyrealm Reunion 2008

Man oh man we had a crazy reunion. 17 grandkids, 16 adults, one house.....it was great. Really crazy, but really great. Of course it felt pretty chaotic at times, but I would take that chaos any day if it means that I get to be with so many people that I adore.

All grandsons, minus McKay who was just too fed up with the 2 million pictures we'd taken by this point....I don't blame him, Jeff would have felt the same way.

All the grandkids.....check out the two Gramie and Grandfather are holding....they weren't thrilled about the photo shoot.

Granddaughters.

So, for those of you who don't know....."Eyrealm" reunions are traditionally pretty structured....almost like a conference. My dad always has a million things that he wants to teach us all and discuss.....his mind is just always overflowing with interesting ideas and incites and he wants to share. Many of the adults have kind of dragged their heals, not wanting to sit through meetings the past few years. Luckily we have a whole crop of grandkids psyched to sit and listen to his great stories and ideas. They love their "Grandfather" (as he has asked to be called) so dearly. It is so fun to see him love my kids so much.

For the 24th of July we had a mini meeting up at my parent's "lighthouse" on the mountain and told a bunch of great pioneer/ancestor stories.

We then all headed over to Bloomington (a little town across the lake where my moms side of the family settled). We visited my dear Grandma Hazel's grave at a beautiful cemetery there overlooking the lake.

We then headed off for a hike to Bloomington lake which I think has got to be one of the worlds most beautiful lakes ever. It's a glacier lake and is surrounded by cascading cliffs and brilliant wildflowers.

It was so fun to have Jeff around for part of the Reunion (before he left for Africa). The kids were thrilled to be with him.

He was our family's lone representative to jump from the rope swing. Little daring Hazel did have the guts to swim around in that freezing water.

After Bloomington Lake and some stellar Bear Lake raspberry shakes we headed back to the beach for some good old pioneer gunny sac races. The kids really got into them.

My little sister Charity even participated in the race via her life sized cardboard cut out that we had made up for Eli's wedding last spring. She just couldn't bear missing out on the reunion and made us PROMISE to include her.

There is just nothing like uncles. My kids decided to adopt Uncle Tal as their dad once Jeff left for Africa. Hazel got really into that idea and insisted on calling him DaDa all week.

Check out these SWEET haircuts my brother's gave each other. Noah and Tal actually sported the above for a few days before buzzing it all off. I love those guys.

Thanks to the Pothier family we all got to sit around and play Wii RockBand one night. Jeff would have dug that! I'm pretty proud that I got a 97% singing Roxanne.....made me want to record another values cd.

And, of course, feeding the horses was a big hit with everyone.

Love this mode of transportation. How am I ever going to convince my kids to ride in their car seats once we're back to normal minivan life?

All in all it was a great reunion. Thank you soooo much mom and dad for hosting us all and putting up with so many screaming kids and for working so hard for so many years to create a family that we're always so excited to be with.