It was Steve's turn to be in charge of his family reunion this year. There are 6 brothers in his family, and each of them plan the reunion, so that your turn to plan comes around every 7 years, which is not bad. The past few summers, we have rented a cabin, but this summer we thought it would be nice to try camping out again. We reserved a group site at Palisades State park, which is right by Manti, UT.
Steve and I have a trailer that we took up, John, Marc, and our daughter Jessica all brought tents. Steve's parents ended up sleeping at Aunt Barbara's house which is in Manti, and spending the days with us, and Kenney and Sandi just came up for the day. We missed Todd's family, they actually had a big trip planned to Washington State, and Adam's family, they live in California now, and aren't able to travel back to Utah very easily.
Sadly, the day of our campout, Grandpa and Grandma had their dog Putter put to sleep. He was extremely old, and was really struggling, so they were quite sad. We all were, Putter was truly part of the family. We ended up getting a couple of helium balloons and each of the kids wrote a note to putter, then we released the balloons. Hopefully they will make it to heaven and Putter can get someone to read the notes to him.
Chloe put together a time capsule. She had all of us fill out a sheet of paper, telling about ourselves, and our goals. We will open it again in 10 years. Fun times!!
We spent a lot of time swimming in the lake. The kids are mostly really good swimmers. They would swim out to the dock, and then jump off the dock doing fun dives.
People mostly brought their own food, but we did have one meal together. I made some barbecued beef roast, that we made into sandwiches. We had quite the crew to feed!!
The cousins put on a talent show, and had some really fun skits. I love seeing all the cousins getting along so well together. Truly a blessing in such a large family.
There was a nice little trail that went around the whole lake, you really couldn't get lost. It was about 2 miles long. The kids enjoyed a hike with Uncle Steve and Grandma. They actually took several hikes around the lake, and us adults didn't mind getting a little bit of exercise as well.
Avery loved the water, I love her smile in this picture. She spent a lot of time on the beach, and at one point, was completely covered in sand. There was also a playground for the younger kids. They really enjoyed walking to the playground and spending time on the slides, and monkey bars.
