Sitterud Family Reunion 2014

LAGOON

The Neldon Sitterud Reunion is held every year at my grandparents' property in Joe's Valley, UT which is a good 6 hours away. When in a caravan included 2 trailers and 6 small children, the trip tends to take even longer than that. We have made it somewhat of a tradition to go a day early and stop at Lagoon for the day, then spend the night at the Lagoon Campground and head to Joe's Valley the next day. Ty had to work since he just started his job a week ago and had only accrued 2 hrs of vacation. ;-) I felt like I needed to be there early Friday to help my mom get things ready, so I rode with them and Ty made the 6 hour trip by himself after work on Friday night. Needless to say he missed out on a fun day at lagoon! We got there a lot later than we had originally hoped (not surprising considering...haha) but there was still plenty of time to do everything everyone wanted. The last half hour the adults gave it up and we sat down while the kids went from ride to ride in the kids area. Grandma and Grandpa spoiled them with a prize at the end of the night! The best part was that we walked out of the park and the trailer was only 20 feet away. :) (My phone died early on in the day so I wasn't able to get a lot of pictures).

I almost forgot to mention! I was so proud of Crystal! She was so brave all day and went on all the rides she was tall enough to go on! Including COLOSSUS! I didn't think she'd do it, but she wasn't even afraid! It took me 16 years to talk myself into going on that ride, and she's only 5!  And guess what?!?!?! She LOVED it! She was pretty upset when we didn't have time to go on it again!

SITTERUD REUNION 2014

Everything came together well with the reunion this year! My mom has most of the pictures and I'm still hoping to get them and add them to this post later, but it took me a year to get the last ones so we'll see... haha. Friday we had the usually hot dog roast for dinner. I tried getting a pic of all the hot dogs we had in the fire at one point but by the time I got the camera out it wasn't quite as impressive. Haha. Friday was my Grandpa Sitterud's 88th birthday. He turned 88 on 8/8 and he is the 8th child in his family of 16! My aunt made him a birthday cake with candles and all! We sang to him and the great grandkids helped him blow out the candles! 

Around the campfire that night, my mom read some questionnaires that the great grandkids had answered about their grandparents (her siblings). Some were pretty funny and others were really sweet. The theme this year was "We are who we are because they were who they were." She was pointing out that we lead by example and in doing so we can affect our prosperities future. 

On Saturday we had a big breakfast and then started out the fun with a Cousin Carnival! We had football throw, plinko, marble race, boat race, kickball shoot, ping pong toss, toilet paper throw, and javeline throw. We had a ton of help from my cousins in running the booths! It would have been crazy without them! The kids could win tickets and get prizes with what they earned. I ran the prize booth (it was completely crazy). My dad made snow cones for everyone while my brothers ran the cotton candy machine. You should have seen the look on their faces when they'd find out the cotton candy and snow cones didn't even cost them tickets and they could have as much as they wanted! Haha! Needless to say I'm surprised Lily wasn't sick from so much sugar by the end of the day.  When all the kids were done playing games my mom had the adults from each family create a team and run thru all the games as quickly as they could. Shockingly enough our family won! Haha! I promise we didn't cheat! 

After the carnival my uncle got the sawdust out! I still haven't counted how much money we picked out of it. Lol. I think the adults enjoy it even more than the kids! Haha! Brings back a lot of memories from reunions when we were young I guess! Lol. Never too old to get on your hands and knees and dig through sawdust looking for coins right? Or maybe I'm just that poor. Haha!

After lunch we played "Name that Ancestor!" with the adults. There were some kinks in the game. My mom and I came up with it together, but we weren't on the same page about a few things. It worked out in the end though. Haha. Oh well. The purpose was to learn more about our ancestors and who they were. Many of their decisions over a hundred years ago have led us to where we are today. I hope we were able to at least peek some of their interest in our family history. While coming up with ancestor clues, I learned a lot about these people's lives and hardships. I found it all very fascinating and hope to be able to read more once things finally get settled down from our move! 

Then it was finally time to breathe! Other than a ton of clean up, our job was done and everything had gone rather smoothly! I was glad everything went well and I hope everyone had fun and enjoyed themselves. My brother said next time its our turn he's going to be in charge and we are going to sit outside and watch movies and eat popcorn all day. LOL. I'm all for it at this point. Haha. 

HOT DOG ROAST

How many hot dogs can we fit in the fire?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

 AROUND THE CAMPFIRE

 NAME THAT ANCESTOR!

 LOLA'S FLOWER GARDEN

A few reunion's ago, my aunt cleared a section of the property, and the kids planted wild flowers and lined it with decorated rocks. The flowers never did grow. My mom had planned on having the kids put fake flowers in it, but we totally forgot to do it on Saturday, so Sunday morning before we left we shoveled up the dirt and stuck them in the ground ourselves.

RANDOM PICTURE OF THE WEEK

He's just cute. Enough said.