The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns a camp outside of Ramona, California. It has a pool, cabins, campground, zip-line, rock-climbing wall, archery course, soccer field, rifle range, team building course, and lots of cool boulders on which to climb for HOURS. It was about 20 degrees hotter up in the hills than by the ocean, but it was still a dreamy setting for family reunion. I think we took advantage of just about everything the camp had to offer and then added hours of playing games and chatting on top of it.
Playing games (the littles are finally getting to be not so little and are allowed to play)
Time with cousins was priceless. Especially these two. They both have no problem mixing it up with the older boys, but they still LOVED on each other all weekend long.
The four seven year-olds in ascending order of age.
The seven-year olds playing on the rocks
The rock-climbing wall. Chewkie was all excited to get suited up and then quickly got nervous climbing. That is about as far as she made it.
Not pictured me. There were two sides to the climbing wall. I started on the more difficult side and got most of the way up until there were no more handholds and had to come down. I may have gotten a bit angry with my dad who was insisting I could go further when I couldn't. After waiting my turn again, I quickly got back into the harness and powered up the other side proving to myself that it wasn't me it was the @#% wall.
The pool. I'm pretty sure this pool gave Chewkie the needed impetus to take swimming lessons. We didn't bring a life jacket for her which meant she could only stay in a small part of the pool where she could touch. Unfortunately for her, almost no one else had the same area restrictions.
Not pictured is the slide which Doodah and Matthew did countless times. Now that Matthew doesn't need glasses, his enthusiasm for water slides has sky-rocketed.
In order to do the slide the life guard made each of the kids swim across the pool to prove their competence in the water. Doodah is not a proficient swimmer but he REALLY wanted to go down that slide so he practiced for some time swimming on his back (his best stroke) before he finally passed. I was so proud of his perseverance.
Sunday, we went to church with Paul and Bre and their ward. Afterwards we got our one and only group photo (the two heart boys are Nichole's foster children who can't legally be shown on social media)
After church on Sunday we headed back to our camp for team building exercises and a faith walk. It was a meaningful experience made even more meaningful to be able to do it with my family (even though not everyone was able to make it).
I'm so grateful for my parents for bearing and raising 8 crazy children. I'm grateful my siblings have turned into fine adults and are raising their own beautiful families. I'm grateful to everyone who supported Paul and me in our family reunion scheme and went with the flow all weekend. I'm grateful for the knowledge that families can be together forever and that forever can start right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment