Hatch Family Reunion--Day 2

When the housing fell through, all subsequent reunion plans were shot.  As a result, much of Thursday morning was spent sitting around wondering what we should do next.  Some had no desire to make the 45 minute drive to Park City, while others, like myself, had been looking forward to experiencing that fun resort town.  Jon had purchased a Groupon for four to the Park City Gun Club, so he obviously voted to go to Park City as well.  

Plus, we needed to legitimize our reunion T-shirts that included the words "Park City" in the logo.  

Eventually three carloads of people left to find adventure in the place where the reunion was originally planned to take place.  No sooner had we arrived than we were informed that the remainder of the family was on their way and they were bringing a picnic lunch with them.  So we found the city park, a perfect place for some sandwiches.

We did the traditional cousins-in-age-order photo:

Left to right: Brendan-16, Caleb-15, Ansel-15, Seth-14, Connor-13, Alyssa-13, Jonas-12, Sam-11, Ian-11, Owen-10, Erin-9, Natalie-9, Henry-8, Sadie-7, Daniel-2

Cute girls that are great friends:

The boys found a basketball court.  Perfect for them.

Love this picture of mother and son:

And rabbit...I mean Grandpa, snacking on whole lettuce leaves like they were potato chips:

After lunch these guys left to boost their manhood by shooting big guns.  Remember Jon's Groupon?  Firing massive weapons may be manly but doing it while wearing matchy-matchy shirts might diminish that slightly.  Just a little bit.

They may have felt tough, but they came back giddy as school girls for all the fun they had.  I think they'd all cite this as a reunion highlight.

Meanwhile, the rest of us went to Park City Mountain Resort for a little fun of our own.  There was a period of more hemming and hawing and indecisiveness but ultimately, most of the cousins (and I!) went on the alpine slide.

Then cooled off with snow cones:

Everyone else headed for home but the kids and I really wanted to try the alpine coaster.  It was an absolute blast.

On our way up the mountain, we started to feel sporadic splashes of raindrops.  Uh-oh.  Family pictures were next on the agenda and a storm was approaching.

After eating dinner and getting all spruced up, we reluctantly made our way to Wheeler Farm to meet a photographer that Lucy had hired to take our pictures.  I say reluctantly because dark clouds were gathering and a fierce wind blowing.  Then, just as we were getting ready to create our first pose, Owen got a bloody nose.

We'd hiked a little ways in to the photographer's chosen spot so Brendan had to sprint to the cars to find some tissue for Owen's nose while the Johnson's braved the wind for their family's shot.  Our family went next and I'm quite sure my face was completely covered by my wind-blown hair in most of those first pictures.  This photo shoot was a disaster.  

But, like everything else, it turned out okay in the end.  

We finally moved into a small clearing that was surrounded by trees and that offered some shelter from the wind.  And thankfully, the looming clouds withheld most of their raindrops.  I think we all agree that the pictures turned out far better than we imagined they would given our circumstances.

Grandma and Grandpa with their 15 grandchildren:

Our little family of 5:

The original Hatches:

Just the boys:

Cute, cute girls:

And the whole crew:

On the way home, I stopped to take a picture at Tara Lane.  Natalie had spotted it earlier and it was just too perfect not to go back and document the street sign with not just my first, but also my middle name.

That night, we gathered for our traditional family talent show.  It's always lots of fun.

Maureen donned a poodle skirt (except it didn't have a poodle) and led the kids in "Lollipop."

Emily told a clever joke.

Seth, Sam and Jay played "Popcorn Popping" on the bells, but not before doing proper stretching, of course.

Jonas and Owen sang a Les Miserables tune.

Alyssa choreographed a dance for the girls to do.  Can you see their pink and denim clothing coordination?

And the show ended as it often does, with Grandpa sharing his testimony and expressing his gratitude for each of his family members.

Not without its bumps, but a good day in the end.

Next up...Lagoon!

Hatch Family Reunion--Day 1

In 15 years of family reunions, we've had our share of hiccups.  Car trouble, sick kids, lost jet ski keys, jet skis that run out of gas, getting lost on the way to family pictures or an infant son whose incessant crying had Jon and I seconds away from packing it home in the middle of the night--just to name a few.  Still, we always go away with good memories outweighing the bad.

Thankfully, this reunion was no different in spite of setting a new record of mishaps in one three-and-a-half-day gathering.  

The reunion was scheduled to begin at the Jordan River Temple.  We dropped the kids off at Jay's sister, Kelly's house, located about a mile away.  She was incredibly generous and brave to let the kids (15 of them!) hang out with her family while all of the adults did a temple session.

I greeted my mother-in-law just inside the front door of the temple.  She expressed how she had worried that we weren't going to make it on time (I didn't think we were at all late), and then added, "But I guess we have bigger problems to worry about."  I had just been at Kelly's house with most of our family members and hadn't heard a peep about anything going wrong.  But now my mother-in-law informed me that we didn't have housing for our reunion.

I was never in on any of the conversations regarding our reunion housing so I don't really know the details of how it all fell through, but evidently the vacation house that had been reserved a year-and-a-half in advance and paid for in full had been sold and was no longer available for our use.  The worst and most significant detail of this debacle is that we weren't informed of this major inconvenience until three hours prior to our scheduled check-in.

There are twenty-seven of us!  Finding a place to lodge that many people in such a short period of time would take a miracle.  Sarah and Christopher went to work to solve the problem while the rest of us went ahead with our scheduled endowment session, family names in hand.  I can't speak for the rest of the family, but I know that I prayed many times for some divine intervention.

The twelve-and-older cousins arrived later to do baptisms.  Watching them participate these ordinances and watching their fathers perform them gave me an immense amount of joy.

Six big boys and one tiny girl.  Such a handsome crew:

When we came out of the temple, we learned that Christopher had been able to secure some housing.  But it wasn't in Park City, the location we'd been planning on and looking forward to.  The old adage "beggars can't be choosers" could be applied to our reunion being relocated to Holladay, Utah.  The last-minute rental house, with its endless quirks and undesirable qualities, allowed us to gather under one roof.  My father-in-law viewed it as a tender mercy and even though it wasn't my favorite place to stay, I'd have to agree with that sentiment.

After a fabulous dinner at Pie Five, a build your own pizza restaurant, we were able to check into the newly secured housing.  Our reunion occupied the left half of this house:

My pictures can't possibly capture just how weird this house was.

The kitchen was incredibly narrow--only two tiles wide!  The refrigerator was set up on a platform making it hard for one of my height to even see into the freezer.

Because the entire kitchen was a step up from the rest of the room, the tall barstools were nowhere near high enough to eat at the bar.  Alyssa may be tiny, but a bar that hits at eye level?

The room Jon and I shared had a decent four-poster king-size bed with curtains on all sides and interesting tapestry wall hangings.  That was fine but check out the much-too-long curtains on a flimsy, sagging, cobweb-covered curtain rod:

These dead spiders along our bedroom wall combined with the live one crawling across the floor had me feeling itchy anytime I entered this room.  I'm not usually a germaphobe, but I never went barefoot through this house!

The kids had a great time playing pool in this room.  The picture doesn't capture its overwhelming musty odor.

The decor throughout was...what do you call it?  Interesting?  Eclectic?  Mishmash? Disturbing?  Probably just depends on which room you were in.

This knight was the piece de resistance of the entryway:

This was an interesting bedroom painting:

How about the cupids watching over you in the laundry room/bathroom?  Creepy, right?

The big boys shared this king/queen/twin room:

The sloping ceilings made it difficult to get around in places:

This room had three king beds.  What are you supposed to do with that?  Three couples have a sleepover? Poor Christopher wracked his brain trying to assign beds to people.  In the end, he, Jen, Sarah and Maureen shared these quarters.

After several of us tripped down all of the weird steps all over the house, I think we finally got used to them.

The bathroom I used was fully carpeted--another reason for not going barefoot--and had a door that didn't lock, leaving any who dared to use it fully exposed to a walk-in.  It did however have a lovely broken light switch within the room.  The closet-sized bathroom down the hall had a switch located outside the bathroom, leaving some family members to enjoy blackout showers when other family members mistook the switch for that belonging to the hall light.

Oh well, you take what you can get.  And this is what we got.  The accommodations may have left me feeling itchy but so far as I could tell, the kids were entirely unfazed by it all.  Well, I take that back, many of them were disturbed by the cupids on the bathroom ceiling.  But in all seriousness, the loss of what we'd heard was an amazing Park City house did not deter cousin bonding in Holladay.  And that's really what these reunions are all about, am I right?

The kids keep growing up and time to get them together while they are young is running out.  At our reunion two years ago, I was hanging in there height-wise with Caleb and my older nephews.  Fast forward two years and they are all well past me.  Big, big boys!

Top: 2012, Helena, MT.  Bottom: 2014, Holladay, UT

Left to right: Seth (14), Caleb (15--really close to 16), Ansel (15), Me, Brendan (16) and Jonas (12)

After unloading our things into the house, we celebrated Maureen's birthday and watched a slide show of pictures from our previous reunions that Jon put together.

It was not where we thought we were going to be but there were many reunion memories yet to come...

Utah!--Part IV

Phew!  Just trying to document all of this Utah fun is exhausting.  One week down, one week to go.

We spent a lovely Sabbath day with our friends, the Evans.  They may have been embarrassed to introduce us to their new ward since this was the worst day of peeling faces for both Caleb and me.  Even my own husband and children could hardly stand to look at me as the sunburned skin sloughed from my forehead and nose.  Eek!  But we had a great time going to church with them and later enjoyed a great Sunday dinner and visiting that lasted long into the evening.

We had gotten word that some of our cousins had arrived in town, so on our way back to Aunt Shauna's house that night, we stopped in to see them at the house they were renting for the next couple of days.  The kids greeted each other with delight, then went straight to playing in the backyard, paying no mind to the late hour.  Not long after the reacquainting began, Sam came into the house with blood covering his face.  Evidently the seesaw he'd been playing on had met with his forehead, leaving an awful gaping wound.  Within minutes, Lucy was rushing Sam to the ER while the rest of us knelt and prayed in their behalf.

Neither Jon nor I could stand the thought of Lucy being on her own (Jay would not arrive in Utah for a couple more days), so Jon dropped our family at Aunt Shauna's and then went to the hospital to offer moral support.  Jon is a great guy with an innate calming influence...until needles, sutures and flesh wounds meet.  That's his cue to leave.  So he made sure Lucy and Sam were both OK but also made sure to exit before any stitching began.

Sam was unbelievably brave and was ready for Jimmer Jam camp the very next morning.

Caleb and several cousins attended Jimmer's basketball camp, held at the new Provo Rec Center.  Caleb rated his experience a 10 out of 10.  Jimmer played with the kids and talked to them about bullying.  The kids practiced basketball drills and played a lot of 3 on 3.  The final day of the 3-day camp was a 3 on 3 tournament.

This next photo was taken by the camp.  Not sure how the kids were grouped, but most of the people in this picture are complete strangers.  Cousin Connor is on the far right of the front row and Caleb is in the middle of the back row.

An action shot and view of the beautiful facility:

Connor defending Caleb's shot in the background while Jimmer talks to campers in the foreground:

After lunch at the insanely busy Cannon Center on BYU campus, we returned to the Provo Rec Center for an afternoon of swimming.  The facility has indoor and outdoor pools, water slides, lazy river and more.  So fun for the kids and dirt cheap. 

We had moved out of my Aunt's house that morning and into a hotel.  My cousin, Sara, and her family had come to town so we needed to vacate the house for them.  It should be noted how fabulous my aunt and uncle are.  They are so, so good to us, treating us like their own kids/grandkids.  They opened their house to us for a full week and we really enjoyed our time with them.  It could also be noted, however, that after a full week as house guests, it was also nice to just be on our own.  

That evening, Monday, we returned to Aunt Shauna and Uncle John's house one last time to have dinner with my cousins.  I had such a great time reminiscing and catching up with them.   

On Tuesday, I went to lunch with friends from our old Provo ward.  We started a weekly lunch tradition back when our oldest kids were tiny.  I moved from Provo over 12 years ago, but that tradition lives on.  Sometime in our lunchtime chatting, which included a good share of belly laughs, we got on the topic of PooPourri.  I shared my testimonial of the product (I could seriously be their spokesperson) and next thing you know, they were all shopping for bottles of their own.  One by one over the course of the next few days, they each texted me to thank me for my recommendation.  I'm telling you, no one should ever go without it.  :)

I said good-bye to my friends and met the family at the Wilkinson Center where they had gone for another round of BYU bowling.

We tried some posed shots but I think the candid pictures are my favorite:

Lucy and Natalie were on the same fashion wave length:

Before leaving BYU for the last time, we stopped by Legacy Hall to measure Alyssa's progress against the shortest athlete in BYU history.  This is proof that she has grown:

Left:  September 2012                                                         Right: July 2014

The usually-locked door heading into the football headquarters was open, so we had a little look around.

Caleb posing in one of the film rooms:

 That evening, Jon and I attended a reunion of students that studied in Guatemala which was being held in honor of our former professor's retirement.  It was a neat walk down memory lane and so convenient that it happened to take place while we were in town.  Our group was the first of about 15 groups of students to study anthropology with this program.  Our professor told us that Jon and I were the first of about three couples to wed as a result of program.  He also added that we were the most memorable couple.  (Hmmm...not sure what he meant by that.)

On Wednesday morning, while Caleb was finishing up at Jimmer Jam, I met some friends for breakfast in the park.  My friend Tracy, who now lives in Arizona, was in town and we were able to coordinate our schedules for a couple of hours of visiting.  Stephanie and her two youngest kids joined us as well.  The kids had a great time playing together.

Kennedy (Tracy's daughter) and Natalie

Alyssa and Lydia (Stephanie's daughter)

We had enjoyed 11 wonderful days in Utah County.  We did so many fun things, but connecting with friends and family was easily the best part.  Around midday, we said our good-byes and headed north for the family reunion portion of our trip.

Oh boy, are there stories to tell about that...