FFF...aka...Forced Family Fun!

Over the past few weeks, both Jake and I have been able to go to family reunions for both of our families. Surprisingly, they were both in Utah. My family reunion was in Orem at my brother's house. It was just my immediate family...my parents, 2 brothers, 2 sisters, 1 grandma, 4 nieces and 2 nephews. Jake's reunion was up in Park City at a lodge. It was his extened family, including his mom's cousins. Starting off with my reunion, we had a weekend full of fun. On the first day we went on a hike, lunch at a park, and a western themed dinner. Friday we competed in silly olympic games, and had a luau for dinner. All of the guys danced for entertainment. Jake did an awesome job...he gives Bieonce a run for her money. :) Afterwards my brother put a huge projector screen up and we watched a movie outside. The last day, we had an unbirthday party for all of the kids and then took swings at a pinata. My sister made a beautiful cake that tasted as good as it looked. That night we went to the Orem Fest and watched fireworks. The weekend all together was great! Jake's family reunion was on the 4th of July. It started out early that morning with a flag cerimony. Two of Jake's brothers, his Dad and one of his brother's friends performed the ceremony in their military uniforms while his sisters sang the national anthem. Jake then gave a little speach about patriotism that went really well. After that, and breakfast, everyone went outside to build their soda bottle rockets and to play Scottish games. They had a log toss, hammer throw, and Scottish relay. I won out of all the girls that threw the log and the hammer. I was pretty proud of myself. After lunch, we were able to launch our rockets! We filled them partially up with water and pumped them full of air....and boom! Some of them launched really high. After dinner, we played games the rest of the night. The rest of the weekend was filled with Home Improvement style house cleaning and maintence at Jake's parents house. His family is frantically trying to finish the bathroom in the basement of the house in anticipation of Jake's youngest brother returning home from his mission on July 23rd. I cleaned Jake's grandma's antique stove in hopes of selling it to an antique dealer. I also puttied the garage in preparation for the first coat of paint ever to be applied to the garage. Jake's family has been living in the house for 23 years........its about time I would say. To finish things off, I helped cut and nail up the sound proof boards on the ceiling so that sheet rock can be put up and paint applied. Jake spent the day putting in insulation throughout the basement with his brother. Jake was also part of the sound proof board installation, along with his brother. All in all we were able to get a lot done.......hopefully Jake's family will be able to finish the bathroom in time. We are so glad that we were able to participate in both family reunions........they were a lot of fun! Thanks goodness for eternal families!!!