Reunion #2 & #3

On the Monday after the 4th of July, we headed out for another adventure.  We drove up to the mountains for the Allen reunion first.

I did a pretty terrible job taking pictures yet again but I do have a few from a trip to Lake Tahoe one day.  It was pretty overcast and even rained a little bit, but we still had fun.  

Hunting for crawdads:

Collecting a few:

Lizzy went way out to this rock:

Chris rented a boat and we took turns going out.  I was first up in our family and decided to try skiing again.  It had probably been 7-8 years but I managed to get up for a little bit.

Then I biffed it hard. :)  All I really wanted was to see if I could do it, though, so I was happy.

Elizabeth was up next.  She wanted to try water-skiing and even got up for a second before deciding she was done.  Then she rode on the tube.  I don't have any pictures of her, just video.

Then, Natalie took a turn on the tube:

Finally, Joe tried wake-boarding  and did great.  It took a few tries to get the hang of it but then he got it easily.  He was pretty sore for days after, though.

Unfortunately we only had a short stay at the Allen reunion before we had to head out to the next reunion.  It was too short but so fun to see everyone.  Some of the highlights for me were:
-The FHE that Brayden and Ethan prepared on the whole armor of God, along with the Allen family trivia game.  I loved that.
-A big game of soccer with adults and kids.  We had a blast and only had minor injuries, thankfully. :)
-Lots of time at the pool.  Nate loved the shallow area and really improved on his swimming.  Eli loved playing in the water, too.  The girls both went down the water slide over and over with their cousins.
-Meal times with everyone together enjoying some great food and conversations.
-Playing tennis with Chris, Emily, Abby, Matt, and Joe.  I'm glad we managed to fit that in.

Then we hit the road back to Idaho, this time to the Atkinder.  It was so nice seeing Joe's cousins, his Grandma, and other family we hadn't seen in awhile.  We had a lot of fun there.

We all took a day trip out to a lake one day.  They had some cliffs you could jump from there and the girls really wanted to try it out.  I jumped off first and thought it was quite terrifying but I was glad I did it.  Then Elizabeth worked up the courage to jump:

 Right after she jumped, Natalie said, "Well now I have to do it." 

And she did! No pictures of her, for some reason.

Here's Joe jumping:

After some initial nervousness, there was no stopping the kids and they jumped probably 10 times.  Twice was good enough for me. :)

Joe went over to a hidden lake and jumped off a really high one--we figured it was about 45-50 ft!  I'm glad I didn't have to watch.  We only have video of that one.

Some of the highlights from the Atkinder were:

-Another great dialogue were we talked about fear.

-A really fun game of water kickball with a slip 'n slide.

-The variety show: our girls showed off some of their vast Harry Potter knowledge for their act, I juggled a soccer ball and Joe wowed everyone with some interpretive dancing.  :)

We were pretty exhausted by the end of it, though, as evidenced by this awesome picture Regina took on our last night there:

We love family reunion trips!