In June, almost our whole Burgess family went to Utah for a family reunion. Christy had a new baby so her family opted to stay home. We rented a large house that I think was in Draper. From the backyard you could see the Draper Temple up on the hill.
I will pause here, right at the start of this post, to explain why Nate and I look less than thrilled in this family picture. (at least I can see that we are...) Somewhere in the middle of this trip, Nate got kidney stones. Going to the ER was the only option, and that costs a minimum of $2500 for us to even walk in the door. From past experience, we knew that the ER couldn't really do anything anyway, so Nate just suffered through the pain for a few days. There was a hot tub at the house, and he spent a fair amount of time in there because it helped a bit. He was still not feeling well when we took these pictures. Now, I am apparently the jealous type and didn't like all the attention Nate was getting. So the day after Nate got kidney stones, I woke up with strep throat. I had never ever before had strep throat. I had actually lived my life believing that I was immune to strep. But I knew it from almost the minute I woke up; I had strep throat. It was unlike any sore throat I had ever had and it got exponentially worse by the minute. So I took off to find the nearest walk in clinic, where I found out that I indeed did have strep. They gave me a prescription and had me drink the most awful tasting liquid I had ever come across. They even warned me that it was disgusting. But it was also magical. At this point, I couldn't talk and could barely swallow and it was with tremendous difficulty. Within fifteen minutes the pain started to subside and within two hours I felt completely normal again. Now we can move on and talk about all the fun we did have.
Chad and Erica's family:
Melanie and Tyler's family (with new baby Bram!):
Rob and Tina's family:
Mom and Dad. Aren't they so cute?
I think this was on the first day after we arrived in Utah. We all hiked up to Mt. Timpanogos Cave. We were slightly worried about the little kids making it up the mountain, but everyone did great! I think we carried Arie some of the time, but I remember her walking a lot. Here's Arie and Jade and the base of the mountain, anticipating what's to come.
We made sure to take some short breaks on the way up so no one would get too tired. This time, we stopped to take a picture by this cool rock.
When we got to the cave, we had to split into two groups to go on the tour. We were trying to keep certain grandchildren together, so Natalie went with the girls her age and was not in our group. So she isn't in our pictures. Oh, and since we live on the surface of the sun, we didn't think our kids would need jackets in the cave. We probably didn't even think about it. But we did find a blanket and one jacket in our car for the kids. Someone else (Rob, maybe?) gave his jacket to Damon. It was slightly chilly in the cave, but Nate and I were fine without jackets.
Arie and Grandpa outside the cave. She kind of likes him a little bit. :)
This is either the door at the entrance or the door at the exit of the cave. All these girls went through the cave together and had a lot of fun on this vacation. The three oldest girls, who were all born within a year of each other, were calling themselves "The Three Amigos" but decided to become the Four Amigos so they could include Kira. Picture: Kira, Maddi, Callie, and Natalie.
The Three Amigos:
Back at the house, Dad told everyone the story of "The Heart of Timpanogos" which is a formation inside the cave. He had to set the record straight and tell us the love story legend instead of the stupid drinking story the tour guide told us.
Mom had prepared a candy jar guessing game for all of the grandkids. She had a bunch of different containers, enough for one for each grandchild, filled with candy. The kids went around and guessed how many pieces of candy were in each jar. The intention was to give the jar to the person who guessed the closest, but since each child could only win one jar, this proved to be more complicated than originally anticipated. So the adults got together and used a method that, I'm pretty sure, involved calculus and rocket science to figure out who would get what jar.
Awarding the jars to the kids:
Arie had her own jar from the beginning since she was too little to guess with the others.
The kids were very excited to get their jars. And after all of our worrying and stewing about how to hand out the jars, several of the kids traded and I think they all shared their candy with each other. The adults were just glad that they were all happy. Here they are with their jars:
These next pictures are from the night we had our family barbeque. Grandma and Deonne's family came over to join us.
This was the best picture I could get of my four wiggle worms with their Great-Grandma. They always love to see her. And she always loved to hold the little ones in her lap.
Me and my Grandma Burgess. I would always leave these reunions realizing that this might be the last time I would see her. In this picture below, she is coming up on 95 years old. And since I am writing this post in hindsight, I now know that this is the last picture of us together.
All of us renewed our Pass Of All Passes, which we had the last time we came to Utah. This got us in to the waterpark, the fun center, and a movie at the dollar theater where we watched the live action Cinderella movie. Some of us went to the Sweets Candy Factory to stock up on candy. They no longer do a tour of the factory, which was sad, but the kids didn't really care because they still got to pick out their own flavors of salt water taffy.
We spent a day at Seven Peaks Waterpark. I spent some time going on the waterslides this time, which was a lot of fun. Chad took Kelton on one of the freefall type waterslides. A few of us stood at the bottom of the waterslide to watch. This waterslide starts you out in a tunnel and then opens up to a half-pipe as it drops you out into a sort of free fall --so you can't see the drop coming. As we waited for Kelton and watched other people come out, I started to get nervous. This was a pretty serious waterslide! I think Chad motioned from the top when it was Kelton's turn. We watched as he came flying out. He's so little that he caught some air coming out of the tunnel and his arms and legs flew out a bit. I'm standing there thinking he is utterly terrified. But he gets off the slide with a huge smile on his face and says something like, "That was awesome! I was flying!" He even went on it a few more times.
We also went to the Lehi Fun Center. We didn't have all the free tokens for the arcade like we did the last time we came, but we had fun doing other things. We played a few games of laser tag. Damon was old enough this time to play and he loved it. We played a round of miniature golf and rode the rides outside. This time, the little rollercoaster outside was working. None of us went on it last time so it was fun to do something new.
Nate and the kids walking into the fun center.
The kids had fun climbing the rock wall. Kelton and Natalie made it all the way to the top.
I brought supplies so that all the kids could make sock animals. They each got to make two animals. They chose between a snake, owl, and octopus. I think they had a lot of fun and played with their animals for the rest of the trip.
We had a very fun family reunion and loved spending time with extended family. We are all excitedly awaiting the next time we get together!
