Before the Reunion

Since the 1st of July I have been basically disconnected from the Internet and totally connected to our children and grandchildren!  Besides the phone and Internet service being dismal at Bear Lake, I have hardly had a moment to get to email (hundreds await my deletion or reply). I haven’t even been able to read our own kids’ blogs, which is sometimes almost a full-time job! The only exception has been Instagram where we found the daily adventures of our vagabond family of seven who are wandering around Europe and unable to be with us this year. They were entertaining us every day with their adventures on Instagram! 

I just read Shawni’s blog about the reunion and am thrilled to have those fun days documented!  That along with a VLOG created by our talented 15 year old grandson Ashton and several Drone pictures taken from above taken by Josh and Eli, have added so much to our ability to be able to capture different perspectives our days together at Bear Lake. I’ll include those links at the end of the reunion and post-reunion posts. 

I do have a few pictures of things that happened before the reunion which we will want to remember so I’ll post them here before I post a few highlights of the reunion from my little iPhone camera along with some of the pictures from our professional photographers which they so willingly share!

As families came in one by one, we had so much fun. Here we are celebrating Lyla’s 7th birthday!

Three-year-old Bennett really enjoyed his food (he is always hungry)!

We spent some fun times at the zoo with Noah and Krisiti’s kids”

The three youngest Pothier girls were with us too while their parents were with Max at a National Volleyball Tournament. Shawni drove and out and dropped them off to us and then flew out to join Max and Dave at the tournament. Lucy shared the beautiful creations she had made on the long car ride from Arizona to Utah. This is one of many amazing pieces of art:

 

We had a grand time at the 4th of July breakfast in our old neighborhood where we connected with a lot of old friends and found Josh’s good friend Ben who is on his way to teach for the U of U in Korea!

That afternoon we had so much fun crowding around my computer to watch Max play for the championship in the National Volleyball Tournament. After winning 11 straight matches, they lost by two points in the third game (darn) at the final. But they still won the silver medal which was a grand reward!  Max is the big Number 15. The commentators just couldn’t say enough about Max’s extraordinary skills!  Here is a picture of what we caught on the computer.

Julie and Eli, adorable Zara and Baby Dean arrived in the afternoon and we were on our way to Bear Lake to see the fireworks!

Family after family arrived and cousins were delighted to reunite. Some hadn’t seen each other since the last reunion.

Grandfather had written to all the grandchildren over eight and asked them to send him a report about what happened in 1921 for a special reward. They all did a great job and sending back information. As it turned out, 1921 was the year Richard’s Dad, Dean Eyre was born. Years ago Richard had collected silver dollars from that year and the kids were given a fun lesson on money and the value of investing money.

 

Each of the dollars was worth from $18-$34 depending on their condition. Each child was allowed to have two silver dollars to start their investment funds. A great discussion followed about the importance of what to do with money they receive or earn: The Eyre tradition is: Give 10%, Save 20% and buy something valuable with the rest. As you can see, they were pretty excited:

The mom’s watched on with approval!

Tal surprised us with a new whiz bang invention from Switzerland, where they have recently moved. One of his products in his new company is a robot vacuum, only available in Europe, which does an amazing job of whisking up dirt while you are out shopping! COOL!

August 8th was the much anticipated day of the beginning of the reunion and it was fast approaching. Charity and Ian, this year’s reunion chairs, had spent countless hours figuring out how to make it a fabulous experience for everyone and the excitement was mounting!

Those days coming next!