This year the Anderson Reunion was down in Dutch John which is like 5 minutes from Flaming Gorge. My Aunt Nancy lives there and she was able to rent the house next door so most of the 'older' folks stayed there. The rest of us were tenting it at a nearby campground.
We drove down on Saturday morning and got all of our tents set up just in time for a huge rainstorm. We were on our way to my aunts house to get the raft to go down the river when it hit so we were really nervous that all of our stuff was going to be soaked. Luckily it wasn't!
This is some of us waiting for the rain to stop so we can go rafting.
Only one of us chose to wait out in the rain!
Once the rain stopped, we piled into the cars and headed down to the river. Just as we get to the launching dock, the rain starts pouring again. We were already out of the cars so they all take off and just leave us with no choice but to go down. It was seriously pouring rain and the river water is about 42 degrees so we were freezing. We did wait a few minutes huddled under the roof of the restrooms for the worst of it to pass. Then we hopped on and froze all the way down but because of the storm, the water was extra angry and it made for a very fun and adventurous run. Luckily nobody fell out of the raft but I was really close to slipping out once but grabbed ahold of Mitch just in time. I don't think any of us will forget that run for along time!
After rafting, we had a delicious feast in the backyard.
Followed by lots of visiting.
We, as in my mom, Jamie and I put together some fun games for Sunday afternoon. To get more people involved, we had a sign up sheet at dinner. We still had a lot of empty spots so we ended up just signing people up ourselves.
The little girls loved snuggling up with Tyler in his warm blanket while waiting for the fireworks!
After the fireworks, we all went back and crashed in our sleeping bags. We were pretty worn out after freezing on the river and then staying up late for fireworks.
Sunday we all went to church at 11. Thankfully our campground had a shower so we were able to clean up a bit before. Then after church we had our games in the backyard. They were a hit, even my grandma who is 90 came out to watch and we got her chuckling.
The first game was archery. We put shaving cream on two people (this is why we had people sign up earlier) and then their partner threw cheese puffs at there face for one minute. I think the most was 19 with my mom and Dave!
Another game was ping pong. We belted an empty tissue box with 8 ping pong balls inside which they had one minute to shake them all out.
We called this next game, Hole in One. You place a cookie on your forehead and then without using your hands slide the cookie down and into your mouth.
This was diving. It was a relay race where you put your nose in vaseline and then stuck a cotton ball to it. Then ran down and shook it off onto the paper plate, then ran back and tagged the next person.
We called this 'Breaking Wind' and had a lot of fun teasing Holly and Michael for signing up (even though I'm pretty sure other people put there names down)! It really was one of the easiest and least messy games we played but because of the name nobody wanted to sign up!! They each had a line of 10 cups that they had to slide across the picnic table using the air in the balloon.
Another favorite was bowling. We put six cups in a circle and then put a nylon leg with a ball inside on their head. Then they had to knock the cups over by swinging it around.
Our last game was water polo and we let anyone who wanted participate. One person on each team held a empty juice bottle, with the bottom cut off, in their mouth. The rest of the team lined up on the other side of the yard and then one by one scooped water into a plastic cup, ran down and emptied it into the bottle and then ran back.
Poor Kaylee ended up getting soaked.
Another game we played was fishing. We filled a bucket full of ice water and put little rocks on the bottom. Each team member ran down and with their toes pulled out a rock and ran back to place it on a plate.
A lot of these game ideas came from the minute to win it website and also from youth conference. We sure had a lot of fun and it gave us something to do while we waited for dinner to finish.
After dinner, we headed back to the campground to roast marshmallows and let the kids run around and be as noisy as they wished. Addy was in pure heaven until she decided to grab a cactus. Not so fun. I ended up having to pull nearly a hundred little cacti out of her hand.
I posted the next picture, even though I am mid sentence of telling Mitch to look at the camera, because of Addy. She just looks so cute and this picture was taken about 10 minutes after the cactus incident. She is one tough cookie and I hope she learned her lesson about not touching a cactus.
Monday morning we had breakfast at the house and then rafted the river one last time. It wasn't nearly as exciting as on Saturday but it was still enjoyable. Plus we took a couple of kids with us so it was probably a good thing it wasn't as rough.
Then we packed up all of our camping stuff and headed back to my parents house.
