We had an awesome Jolley family reunion at the Jolley ranch in Salmon. It was a lot of playing, visiting and hanging out. When my mom asked the girls, they said their favorite part was the sodas. The freedom of playing on the farm and wandering where ever they wanted, or eating licorice or soda whenever they wanted were all part of the magic.
Poor Ryan who is surrounded by girls all day every day at home, was in boy heaven. There were tons of little boys his age to play with, and tractors and motorcycles and Nate to take him on rides on them.
And toy guns.
The stick game is always a hit. Someone calls our right/left and you move that direction and catch the stick next to you before it hits the ground.
We also played human foosball. Only a few people got beaned in the head.
Best part of the day was the slush break. It's nice to have a bit of Grandma Jolley around even when she's been gone for 9 years now.
Grandpa Knight had some back problems and they had to leave early to go get checked out at the hospital unfortunately, so they missed a lot of the reunion. But Megan was very happy to hang out with Grandpa while he was there.
In Utah and on the drive up she had been begging to go home several times every day until we saw Grandma and Grandpa Knight again, then she was fine for a few more days.
Giant Twister:
Rachel and Hannah had so much fun together while we were up there. They spent most of every day together and had a blast.
We were all shocked and very saddened when we learned a week and a half later that she had developed an e. coli infection and died from complications. What a shock. We are thankful for eternal families and the fun times we were able to have with Hannah. We will miss her a lot.
Those lawn games wore some of the old fogies out. ;)
We played "Do You Love Your Neighbor?"
We also played missionary tag.
Rachel got that hat from Jacob's cousin, Janie, and was very proud of it. She and Hannah kept partnering up every chance they got during missionary tag.
Grandma took the kids for an exciting ride on the golf cart.
And the kids were excited to ride in the back of the truck, even if it was just a half a mile down the road to the Tarkalson's house for dinner.
They have a baby deer that is very tame. Everyone loved being able to pet it.
Annie says she's going to be a veterinarian when she grows up.
Grandpa Jolley and my mom.
Conner was bouncing the kids on the trampoline. I was pretty surprised that no one ended up with a broken arm with all the crazy trampoline stuff going on. :)
That night we went back to the Stokes' huge basement for a movie night. We snuck in a quick couple episodes of Penguins of Madagascar, then put the kids to bed before the big kids moved in.
Thursday they set up the huge slip and slide.
The spectators:
The older kids spaced themselves at intervals on the slide to push the little kids down on inner tubes.
Hannah and Brooklyn and Rachel made a chain of tubes to ride down on.
Thursday afternoon a lot of the Jolleys and Todd and Savannah floated the Salmon River. They took along our camera since it's waterproof.
Grandpa and Pat came out a few times to watch the fun, but Grandpa gets tired easily, so couldn't be out there the whole time. Todd brought his computer over to show Grandpa the pictures he and I had taken of all the fun.
Thursday afternoon we got the kiddie pools out for the little kids.
Other fun included the drencher and the bottle rockets.
We had fun playing the name game, or 4 on a couch, or something along those lines. We all chose someone else's name from a hat and the person to the right of the empty chair calls a name and whoever drew their name moves to the empty chair. The goal is to get all boys or all girls on the "couch." It was pretty fun. And Megan liked walking around the circle thinking everyone was looking at her. :)
After kids were in bed we enjoyed a fun game of Tenzi and the family reunion was officially over. But we still had another day of fun up at the lake to come...
