Family Reunion-Saturday

Saturday morning around 1am I was woke up by Rachel. She started throwing up and kept it up all night like clockwork every 2 hours. Except after the first two times there was nothing left in her stomach, so it was just dry heaves. Poor girl. She would whine and say, "tummy hurts" or "feel yucky," then throw up, then go right back to sleep for another couple of hours. Finally around 7 she had her last episode and slept until 11 or so. After that she did pretty well for the rest of they day, though she was obviously tired and didn't have much of an appetite. So the poor kid missed out on some fun things, like the slip 'n slide (they had a small one for the little kids) and water balloons. We took turns with Jake and I and my parents hanging out listening for Rachel to wake up, so we each got to do some fun stuff on Saturday.

First up on Saturday was the slip 'n slide. They set up a huge one that looked like a lot of fun, but I was too tired from no sleep to join in any more than watching. They started a big chain slip 'n slide that was really funny. Later they counted how many in a row they could get, with everyone getting up after they reached the bottom, running back up to the top and going again. I think their record was something like 85ish.


After the slip 'n slide we ate lunch, then played some games. This fun one involved holding your pvc "stick" straight up, then following the directions of the "caller," everyone would go either left or right, leaving your stick behind, trying to catch the one next to you before it hit the ground. If it hit before you caught it, you were out. It was so fun, and there were some really graceful (and some not-so-graceful) dives.

Next came bottle rockets. They had soda bottles partially filled with water that they stuck on this contraption they had made a few years back, then used a bike pump to pump air into the bottle until the pressure got high enough to launch the bottle into the air. It kept us entertained for quite a while.
After a while the guys who were pumping the bike pump got tired, and brought out an air compressor to keep the fun going.
For more water fun we did a water balloon toss, which later turned into the kids just throwing them around and a mini water balloon fight.
We then had a bubble blowing contest with bubble gum. There were some pretty good bubbles.

Barbara said, "take as many as you want." Mason and Hayden took as many as would fit in their hands. :)
Here's Mary'sI love how Gabby's gum matches her swimsuit.
Becky had several bubbles that covered her face.Bryce:
Megan had lots of good ones going:We wrapped up the games with balloon animals. I left to go take over watching Rachel, but I hear the adults had as much (or maybe more) fun figuring out how to make the animals as the kids had playing with them.
We finished off the evening with more food, and they showed another movie with the projector on the lawn, but I was too pooped for that. The next morning we went to church, then left for our drive back down to Utah to catch our plane the next day. It was a fun reunion and I'm glad we got to go. We look forward to the next one.

Unfortunately Monday morning I woke up sick. I thought it was just from not getting enough sleep and eating junk on Sunday, but then I heard that my brother, Justin, and my cousin, Mary both were sick on Monday, too, so I'm guessing that Rachel did a little bit of sharing and passed her bug on to us. I'm feeling better now, though.

One thing we have learned (again) from this trip: Plan vacations to have more vacation days than travel days. 4 days of travel and 2 days of vacation just doesn't cut it.