McMillan family reunion: Bear Lake 2009

The McMillans (my side of the family) have started an annual tradition of going to Bear Lake for our summer reunion. We can't get enough of that place. It's got all of the necessary elements for a fun family reunion: beaches, milkshakes, a nice cabin to sleep in, and of course, the best family around! Gotta love it. The attendee's of the reunion were: my sister's family (Jenny, who owns the cabin), my parents, my sister Melinda's kids and my family. A FUN group, but we missed everyone who wasn't there.

This year we were pretty positive that it was going to be good weather, since we went in mid August...but sadly, it was pretty cold and windy the whole weekend. The first day at the beach was warm enough to swim, though. The water at Bear Lake is always a little chilly, so I was sure Gracie would just dip her feet in at the most and be done swimming, BUT...she couldn't get enough of it!! She'd walk around, splish-splashin' non-stop and bend over like she wanted to put her face in! She constantly wanted to go deeper and deeper...it was hilarious! She's much braver than her mom when it comes to cold water...she does have quite a bit of insulation though :) Here are some of the cousins in the back of my parent's car, eating some snacks. They had such a good time together all weekend...it was nice to have a few little babysitters too. :)Jenny and I love forcing Grace and Ruby to be best friends. Any chance we get we put them together :) They actually are really cute together, talking, jabbering, touching each others faces...we're excited for them to run around and play together someday. Look at all those rolls!

We made the classic raspberry milkshake run to town. Jared was sad that he missed it, (he came up a day late with Spencer and Brendan). DELISH! The kids loved soaking in the hot tub. Gracie, of course, wanted to dive in. No such luck, Gracie girl! She got into everything at the cabin, just like at home. I got a picture of her getting into all of the DVD's, then Crew said, "take a picture of me too!" and pulled that face!! Such a cute little model man. The bottom right picture is of Crew in his football pose. All weekend he'd strike this pose, yell, "blue 42, hut hut!" and then choose someone in the room to tackle. We had to be on our toes at all times...he's a pretty tough kid and took Grandma out more than once! Family game night. Count on Mom to have some sort of wacky game for the kids to try out! :) She spread whipped cream on their faces, gave them puffy cheetos, and said whoever could throw the most cheetos on their opponent's face wins! Of course the kids loved it, plus they got facials in the meantime! Then we played family bingo. We got a blank bingo card and filled it in with all of the members of our family. Winners got candy bars! It was such a fun night...The last night we were there we had a Luau. Jenny thought of the idea and then gave us assignments. She decorated the cabin in Hawaiian decor, gave everybody outfits and lei's, and cooked up some yummy Hawaiian haystacks for dinner!
Mom taught everyone a Hawaiian hula dance, and challenged everyone to a hula-hoop contest (Rhiannon killed everyone! She could hula hoop for hours!) Everyone performed the hula dance that they had learned, and then proceeded to hula through the NEXT song on the CD my mom brought which was "Carry on my Wayward Son" by Kansas...that was memorable. Jared and I were in charge of the game (Hawaiian charades), and the dessert. We brought an ice cream maker up and made some authentic mango ice cream! It was delish if I do say so myself...my dad said it tasted like the ice cream he ate on his mission in Brazil! It was a success. p.s. Jared always has to pull some sort of a face in all pictures:We had such a fun weekend, it went by so fast! Can't wait to do it all again next year! :)