First Family Reunion

Saturday night, we had our first family reunion with my side of the family. Maybe we decided it was time for an official reunion because we are all now married??? Who knows why, but it was lots of fun!

We started the evening at my parents' house for dinner. It was way yummy food, and always good company.

Then we headed over to the church for some "Minute To Win It" games. The adults were paired with a child so they could help them with the games. It worked out great, and it was so fun to watch the adults with the younger ones.

Here is some of the madness! Some of these pictures will make great blackmail some day! ;)


Nikole was paired with Kate. Here they are before their first game!



Danika is just barely walking, so I had to snap a shot of her cute little self wandering around the gym.



Tai watching McKenzie attempting to get 6 penne noodles onto a linguine noodle.



Hayden watching as Andrew tries to sort M&M's.



Jordan helping Kailie try to figure out how to stack the apples.



Andy shooting rubber bands at a pyramid of empty soda cans in order to knock them off the table. He looks like a great shot!



Andrew helping Hayden stack the apples. Andrew was so cute to explain things to Hayden and help him with every game. Hayden ate it up and is still talking about is awesome uncle.



Brooke trying to blow a bubble across the room and through a hoop!



Lana was quite the cheerleader! She got so excited watching her partner, Brooke, play the games.



My mom, successfully got 6 penne noodles on her linguine noodle. (She did have a little help from her cute partner, Brielle.)



Sara and Rylee shaking their booties to get ping pong balls out of the tissue boxes that were
attached to their waists.



Andrew showing Hayden how to properly shoot a rubber band!



Lana trying to sort the M&M's as fast as she could!



Jordan taking a picture of me, taking a picture of him!



Rylee, Sara, and Kate as Rylee gets ready to attempt "Penny Hose."



Bill, Andy, and Danika. Bill was my helper for the night, and didn't get to participate in many of the games. He was Mr. Timer Man while I was Mrs. Picture Lady. :)



My dad attempting to get the penne noodles onto the linguine noodle. Check out that concentration!



My mom flinging a ping pong ball into a laundry basket, using the towel. Look how cute little Brielle is!



Hayden throwing a water bottle at the table, trying to land it right-side-up. I don't think that one is going to stick!


Mike and my dad flinging ping pong balls into the basket.

Cute little Isaak. He wanted nothing other than to get his treat that I had set out at each station for anyone who tried the game. He is so adorable! I asked if I could take his picture, and he did this cute little pose. Then he asked me to take more. He is so fun!

Brooke, also trying to string those darn noodles!

Sara, attempting to get an Oreo from her forehead into her mouth, using only her face muscles. Classic picture!

Andrew helping Hayden stack the cups. Those cups were a little big for those cute small hands.

The cute pair, Brooke and Lana.

Nikole attempting the penny hose game! What a good sport!

Andrew and Hayden shakin' it!

Sara trying to move the blue cup through the stack of red cups. Don't drop them, Sara!

Wow, Andy! That is just the look for you!

Jordan showing us his moves!

Kate showing us how it's done. The little ones could really shake it!

Jordan and Nikole being the sweet aunt and uncle as they help Kailie and Kate. Our kids have the best aunts and uncles!

It was lots of fun, and we had a lot of laughs. Thanks to my awesome family for a fun night! Let's do it again soon!

4th of July Weekend

Hey all, check out me and my bad self! I may be on a roll here. I am doing another blog entry and it hasn't been another month!

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE the 4th? Well just in case you have somehow missed that one, I LOVE THE 4th OF JULY! It is my favorite holiday, and this year was so much fun because we had a whole weekend of celebrating. Here's the rundown:

Saturday:

We got up early in the morning to get everyone gussied up in their patriotic gear for the parade. Aw, look how cute they are. The weather was perfect. It was warm enough for shorts, but we weren't sweltering in the heat.

And quite possibly the most exciting part of the whole parade for me was when the fire engines went by and the two younger ones thought it was great. No tears! What a pleasant surprise!

After the parade, we came home and got ready for a patriotic lunch with some of our awesome friends.

And it just wouldn't be the 4th of July without some water fun, right?

Later that afternoon, we had fun making patriotic treats.

Oh yummy!

And, of course, that evening we watched the city fireworks. Well, I took Ryele and Lana to watch them. Kate had pooped out and Hayden wasn't interested in going, so Bill got to stay home with those two.

On to SUNDAY!

We got up and went to church Sunday morning. It's always fun singing the patriotic songs at church.

After church we came home and started preparing more patriotic food, since one day of patriotic food was definitely not enough. This time, we had Andrew and Sara and my parents for dinner.

After dinner, Andrew made his now famous home-made ice cream as Rylee watched every single move he made.

And Kate waited patiently with Sara. They spent the time blowing a balloon across the counter and laughing hysterically at it. We are easily entertained around these parts.

And as the ice cream was churning, Andrew was doing tricks. The kid does more tricks than a circus performer. Seriously, he's fun to be around. He compressed air in his mouth and blew it out so it looked like smoke, he did several magic tricks, and did the ever popular blow-the-ping-pong-ball-in-the-air trick.;)

My mom played with Hayden and kept him out of trouble. Thank you! They were apparently too cool for Andrew's tricks that had the rest of us amused.

Finally, it was time to eat the dessert! I made this patriotic cake. Don't judge. It was my first attempt at doing this one. It tasted really good though!

As if we didn't have enough sugar in our bellies, we decided to go outside and whack at this thing, hoping that more sugar would come spilling out.


Andrew busted the sucker wide open and what do you know, more sugar came spilling out!

Then he got in on the candy action too! Since there weren't a whole bunch of kids, they all ended up picking up their favorite pieces instead of just grabbing all they could. It was hilarious to watch.

The stray Starbursts from the pinata ended up being used in a game of "Starburst Baseball." Andrew pitched...

Dad played catcher. Bill hit the Starburst, and....

as Sara sat...WHAMMO! She took a line drive right to the knee.

Look closely and you will see the square mark the Starburst left on the inside of her left knee. Oops, maybe this 'isn't a good activity.'

We must play safer games from now on. Games like balance-the-bat-on-your-nose...

...or see-how-long-you-can-leave-your-hand-in-the-ice-bucket-after-making-ice-cream...

...or a good old fashioned pillow fight!

The evening ended with our own fireworks at home and a late-night video watching party with just the big people. It was a fantastic day!

Then comes MONDAY:

We were invited by a fantastic family in our ward to come to a party at the park. These people really know how to throw a party!

There was fantastic food,

Lots of good friends, and...

...FUN!!!

Here is the adorable, fun, fantastic host family getting ready to go down the water slide together.

Lana and Rylee making a chain with their friends.

I don't think many of the adults came thinking we were going to play in the water. But it just looked to fun! Here is Bill sliding in the clothes he came in.

And here he is going down the slide with Lana.

Then he let Rylee go down on his back. This was quite popular for the kids to take a ride on their daddy's back. That way, daddy gets to swallow all of the water, and the kids just get the fun ride!

Hayden and Kate had no interest playing in the water, so the played on the swings and the slide. They didn't know the fun they were missing out on!


The men of the group tried being adventurous. It went from "sliding for distance" to standing up on the way down, seeing if they could make it to the bottom without falling.

After watching all of this fun, most of the women decided to say, "What the heck" and slide wearing what we came in as well. I was wearing white pants, so I saved my sliding until just before I was ready to go. Holy cow, was that fun! It is so awesome to have a huge group of friends that you can just let your hair down with and laugh with!

There is talk of another party like this one for Labor Day. I think next time we will all come appropriately dressed and not just have our kids in swimming suits! Now if only we didn't have the sore muscles! Holy cow, who would have thought sliding like that would leave muscles hurting that you didn't even know you had! We may be getting old, but we are definitely not to old to have a good time!

Thank you to all who played with our family over the weekend! We had so much fun and loved all three days! We have so many good friends and amazing family to hang out with! It was a perfect way to celebrate our freedoms that we enjoy in this land that we love!