Garn Reunion - Part One

My mom's family gathers every three years for a Garn Reunion over July 4, and this was the year! Different original siblings take turns planning the reunion. My aunt Kris and her kids and their families did the planning this year and they pulled off a fabulously fun event. It was at the Homestead in Midway, Utah. Every family gets their own rooms (we get a group rate if we book our rooms in a certain period of time, usually about two years in advance). We drove up for two of the days, but next time I think we'll stay in the designated location, even if we live close by.

We met for three days, and they structured the first and last days to have family games from 10-12 in the morning, and games in the evening from 6-8. Then late nighters always stay up and play games, which is just about everyone. The middle day everyone only gathered in the evening. This way families that came to gather for the larger Garn family can fit in an immediate family reunion as well. It is a two-fer, so to speak. That worked well. Here is the group on the first day for the July 4th devotional.

I like to capture the games played for future youth events or reunions on Geoff's side, so here we go. I missed the kick-off game of bingo, where a large bingo card had bits of information to gather from everyone, such as the following: Speaks German, Owned a rotary phone, etc. You crossed off the square as you found someone who met the square's statement. Fun way to learn about each other.

We then had relays. Everyone was divided into four teams. Each team had to go through the following games:

Five members of the team had to pass cups of water over their heads to the last person who poured it into a bucket at the end of the line. The first to overflow their bucket won. There was one runner who took cups from the back to the front of the line again (several cups were going at a time), and several non-players were keeping the front buckets full of water.

Five members of the team with loose clothing passed a string down through their clothes until they were all connected, then they ran through several cones to an end point.

The tallest team member automatically participated in this game. A bag of panty hose had to be opened, a ball placed at the foot and the panty hose put on the head. A series of three items had to be knocked over: a small can, a water bottle and a cup.

A daring team member had to choose from a nasty selection of "mystery" drinks and gulp down a cup.

Six team members competed. All stood in a line with a stack of cups before them. The first person built a tower with the cups, the next person took them down to the stack, the next person built a tower, and so on.

Two team members had to sheets of dot stickers. One team member stood still while the two team members stuck their stickers on any bare skin of the still team member. First team to be done with their sheets of stickers won.

One member of each team had to pull tissues out of a tissue box. First to empty won.

I wasn't close to this event and missed the details, but from what I could tell, two team members were blindfolded. A few team members had some cards with photos on them. They had to describe the item in the photo to the blindfolded team members. Those blindfolded then ran to some items down the field to find what was described to them. The cardholding team members could yell directions.

Five team members sat in a line. At one end was a pile of about 10 balls, on the other was a basket. The team members had to pass the pile of balls down the line with only their feet and put them in the basket. If a ball fell on the ground it started over at the pile.

Two members from each team had to put together a puzzle. I participated in this event and putting a puzzle together under pressure is pretty intense!

The final event was a relay. The first was a runner with a child on their shoulders. The second runner had to be younger than 8. The final runner had to be older than 50.

It was a great way to get everyone interacting and working together!

There was a tattoo station...

And my cousin won the best outfit prize...

To be continued...

June Wrap-Up

June flew by so fast my head is spinning. There was the end of school hoopla, sending Stella off (we miss her!), and girl's camp, then our quick trip to Hawaii, Blackberry Days, and watching Davey & Erica's kids. In between we celebrated a few birthdays. First Nikki's...

Then Erica's. We watched her kids a bit that day and then had some cake waiting for her when she picked them up!

While in Hawaii, Emma and Hannah turned 3...

Tennie started her summer job of painting the exterior of houses. She's tackled this hard, hot work with serious gusto. She's the only female on the team and rocking it! Especially in her mask when removing paint with led...

Ceci has discovered a serious love of rock climbing. She goes to the indoor gym a few times a week and progresses quickly. She, Geoff, Tennie and Adele went to City of Rocks in Southern Idaho to camp and climb. Ingrid, Taeya, Anders and Lucy joined them too. We've discovered a new favorite outdoor destination! Tennie took a few pictures...

The Trenches

I watched Erica and Davey's kids for a few days while they were in New York, and I forgot just how hard it is to mother young children! It is constant.

Eli and Kate are five, and Emma and Hannah just turned three. That is a lot of kids all bunched together, and I'm telling you that two just-three-year-olds is significantly more than just one!

These are some cute kids, and they are helpful and smart and well-adjusted. Davey and Erica are tremendous parents and should get some premium beach front property in the next life for the endurance required to have two sets of twins so close together! Here is how adorable they are. Look what they left on their window (there is a big heart around the whole thing)...

And to help the kids conceptualize the overall plan of who was coming when...

Everything was so well-organized it made it easy to come into their life and keep it going. I must admit I was a bit nervous, so I planned a summer camp with fun writing, math, science, geography and art activities from the book, Playful Learning. That helped me not feel like things were so chaotic! (Plus it helped me relive some of those good ol' homeschooling days.)

The last day we had a 4th of July party where we read the two patriotic books mentioned in the last post, made a flag cake and wind socks, listened to Wee Sing America as we marched around the house and had a bike parade.

We thought it would be fun to adapt a balloon game to our party and called it, Firecracker. You know the game, everyone has a balloon tried to their ankle and everyone tries to pop everyone else's balloon without their's getting popped. Well, there is one very competitive personality mixed with others with serious balloon attachment and others who just didn't want to jump in the fray. It ended with extreme screaming and crying, frustration and pouting and one still rearing to play. It totally and completely backfired as a fun game. You win some and you lose some. Overall, lot of good times.

One little step in passing along the love of FREEDOM to the younger generation.

God Bless America! And God bless parents of young kids too!

Freedom

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I love the colors red, white and blue (almost everything I wear is of these colors, stripes, too!) I love the songs. I love that people gather with family or friends. I love fireworks and almost cry thinking about what they symbolize. But THIS year I'm really loving FREEDOM. Sure, I've been grateful for freedom all along, but I'm realizing with some depth just what the price has been, over and over, for the freedoms we have.

Last year I started a new tradition of reading an early American history book or biography before July 4th. This year I read three. One was about the role women played in the revolutionary war, the second was about Abigail Adams. Both were good, but I returned them to my sister-in-law and don't remember the names. I then watched the John Adams series with Amazon Prime. Having the background of the Abigail Adams book, I loved it. I marveled at the sacrifice of comfort, money, home and family John and Abigail Adams gave. Now I'm almost done with Washington, A Life.

This book has been overwhelmingly inspiring and educational. It is thick and detailed and magnificently written. I am astonished at the character and overall integrity of George Washington. He was human, and with that comes imperfection and occasional bad judgement, but on the whole this man was a force. A power of good. His sacrifice, and his make-or-break influence on our newly-free country, is astounding. Those he led in the Revolutionary War suffered privations of every kind for long periods of time, soldiers and their families alike. The precariousness of our country in those days was more acute than I ever imagined, and I'm more grateful to God than ever before that through His grace it survived!

As I've read this book I've marveled at the historical fact that there is an opposition to freedom that exists, and always has, all over the world. Power is an age-old, sought-after quest for men on this earth. As a result, freedom has to be defended. Constantly. In our earliest history it was religious freedom, then it was political, and moved on to basic inalienable rights for ALL under our constitution. There is freedom of speech (and boy does that ever get out of hand at times, but we have it!), the freedom to bare arms, the freedom to prosper. Freedom to CHOOSE. It is for this cause of FREEDOM that millions have voluntarily sacrificed their lives, both to the point of death and often in simple safety, comforts and conveniences to serve in office, march for rights, proclaim truths, etc.

I have been wondering this past week what freedoms need defending now? What people need defending? What rights? What truths? And what am I going to do about it?

For starters, our younger generations are not taught about the founding principles of this nation, and some of the older generations have forgotten. I've been trying to instill a love of this country in my children. We listen to Wee Sing America, still, even now that the girls are older. We have two great books that visually teach the meaning of the Constitution and the beautiful story of The Star Bangled Banner.

We have flags in our plants indoors and out.

We make a flag cake and put out our patriotic dish towels. It isn't a huge hullabaloo (and maybe that is why I love it), just enough to REMEMBER.

But next I feel I need to be informed. Not from a biased news station or talk show, but really try to get an overall picture of issues. This sometimes has proven to take some digging, as many things are not talked about in the media. What are the pros and cons of issues. What do all sides feel about it, and why? And then my goal is to look for truth in all the confusing chaos. That TRUTH is what I want to defend. George Washington was defending the true principle of freedom. It did not exist as a political form before His time. It was a huge gamble, but he and many others believed it possible. He did not initially take sides but stood tall above the extreme partisanship (reminds me a lot of today, to tell the truth). He was blasted again and again, falsely, for all sorts of crazy ambitions, none of which were true. Defending truth is rarely popular or easy, but it is a clear purpose that has kept people going all throughout our American history and others.

May God continue to bless America, and may we be worthy defenders of that blessing!

Blackberry Days - Day 3 & 4

On Sunday Erica spoke in sacrament meeting and Em taught in her ward, so we divided up between their wards. Our family went to hear Erica, which was amazing. She did a great job inspiring all of us. Our friends, the Parrys, old neighbors in Redmond, Washington, are in their congregation, so it was really fun to catch up with Heather!

After lunch and naps at Erica's place we all met up at a Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. All of the cousins love Geoff. He is always up for a wrestle, a chase, a game of basketball, or providing any kind of fun given the circumstances. He is fun for every age. This year he brought sling shots and a bow and arrow to the park.

He's so good at trusting the goodness in each kid. They feel respected and admired and adored all at once.

Meanwhile these cuties had rigged some string to water bottles and were trying to catch fish, the stuff of a perfect, imaginative childhood...

While walking to take that last picture I heard Ceci call my name from above.

That kid loves to climb trees. 

There was always a clump of people visiting on the blankets...

And those teenage girls made a lot of bracelets and hair wraps for each other and the younger girl cousins. Oh, and some of those older girls cousins colored their hair raspberry red for fun one night. Did you notice? The younger girl cousins got red (washable marker) streaks in admiration for their adoring older cousins.

Many went to explore an old train.

 

There was some marshmallow roasting even though it was still light out, which takes away a bit from the campfire mood but not the taste of the marshmallow...

As the afternoon faded away and the air grew cool Davey began to play some songs, the girls still braided on, and learnings about ancient Jerusalem was the topic of conversation. Adele appropriately said, "This is a perfect moment."

Before we all went our own way we had someone take a picture...

And then we sang, Who Took the Overalls from Mrs. Murphy's Chowder. This is a song we sang "down by the pond" at the fire pit at those first Blackberry Days in Auburn. It goes like this,

Who took the overalls from Mrs. Murphy's chowder?
Nobody knows so shout it all the louder.

It starts as a whisper and gets louder and louder until everyone is shouting at their capacity. Little kids love this, of course. It seemed a little out of place at the park. Disruptive to other park goers, for sure. But those who remembered the Auburn days were beaming at the memory. Those that were too young to remember had no idea what we were doing.  Here is an old picture, mid - Who Took the Overalls...

Right there in the park we prayed as a family. It was a perfect moment of unity and love and everyone felt it. We then gathered for the handshake that originated with Geoff's parents. All hands in with a "Davises Forever!"

There is power in family togetherness.

The last day I didn't join everyone as I just look outside and my allergies seem to flair up. And there aren't a lot of pictures from that day, but it was an intense noodle hockey game (girls against boys, and the girls won), swimming at Britt's pool and then dinner and updates in the clubhouse. I joined for the final part.

The teenagers gave updates, which was fun. Hopefully they know how lucky they are to belong to a family that is so interested, supportive and bursting with love.

Until Christmas when we're all together again!