A Birthday and Glimpses of the Reunion 2016

Before I begin, I have to say thank you to all of you who commented on Richard's guest post. The comments were insightful, stimulating, intelligent and mostly supportive and kind!  I loved the insights and suggestions! Thank you all for being part of a very interesting conversation!

Now, on to some fun!

Cameras were going all around me by the time I arrived at the reunion site this year. Since I was a little late, I just soaked it in and didn’t take many pictures. I gathered a few from Rick’s phone but so many scattered after that last day that we didn’t have time to exchange pictures with the real photographers as usual.

But for family history’s sake, I’m adding my view of the raucous fun we had while almost all of the 47 of us were there for those four days. Elle was in summer school at BYU so she arrived a bit late and we dearly missed Charity, Ian, Moses and Max but we did have all of us together in one giant heap!  So fun!

One day after the Grammie Camps on July 18th, it was Isaac’s birthday which we always seem to be able to celebrate together at the lake since it happens every year on July 19th. Fun for us but by the time you’re 15, you probably want a little friend time too huh?  Anyway, Isaac is a great sport and Saren always sees that he has a great birthday.

Saren and Lucy that is!  Isaac has a special gift with children and had been holding down the fort for many days with lots of little kids until his older cousins began to arrive. He is really quite incredible when it comes to engaging and really having fun with kids. Lucy obviously recognized that and after everyone left and the dust had settled I found this adorable birthday card she had made for him. I'm so glad he left it so I can document it here:


And that’s not the end….this was on the other side:


Is that cute enough? 

Then oddly enough, last night as I was going through some old papers I found this little treasure, that Lucy had created for Isaac, maybe a year or two ago. Lucy obviously adores Isaac (and Princess Ariel).  What a mind of wonder that girl has, in addition to some pretty amazing art skills! Isaac’s hair is my favorite!



Look at the detail on that thing!

So all the grandkids along with all his siblings and adults had a grand time celebrating Isaac’s birthday on the eve of the reunion. Ashton, a budding film maker, even made a video of his brother’s birthday here if you're interested. The culmination of the party was a piñata. See that poor little donkey on the left and that huge line of kids ready to batter him?



How do you do a birthday cake for this many kids? Somehow Saren makes it work!


 

The Looslis were in charge of the reunion this year and they did a grand job of providing a terrific reunion for all of us. In ordering the T shirts, this year they even thought of a way to make Charity feel included since she was so sad not to be able to be there, even though she was glad to be holding her sweet baby in London while we were all reveling together at Bear Lake.

The revelation of the t-shirts is always a fun way to kick off the reunion, but this one was especially poignant this year:



I hope you can read the small print at the bottom…”except this once”! 

Below are just a few of pictures I got of our fun activities. I’m hoping others who have so much more will post more. We are so lucky that moments that only happen once can be caught on a camera. And if aren't…they usually fade away forever.

Eliza stepped up to make the reunion calendar, which Charity has made for us the past many years and did a great job!  Charity wasn’t just a name on the t-shirts It was an action word throughout the reunion. Everyone was assigned a secret buddy and there were all kinds of fun charitable activities going on through the whole four days!

The festivities of the Opening Ceremonies were caught, not only on several cameras but also with cameras from Josh's drone (wish I knew how to post those!





The cousins, coming from all over creation were so glad to see each other!



Unlike Charity and Ian who did the whole reunion on their own last year, the Looslis had five kids to help. Each of the kids took a section of the reunion to be in charge of and did a great job giving instructions!





As soon as it was dark, we had the traditional bonfire on the beach. Everyone had so much fun guessing who sent in which song on a CD, organized and played by Ashton from a car stereo. Every man, woman and child sends in a favorite song. Since there are so many we only have a chance to hear a short few measures of each song, but it’s so fun to see who raises their hand or stands to dance when they hear their song. Ashton sent a link to everyone that can be used in the car or on a phone. That is always a hit. Thanks Ash!

Elize was in charge of what we loosely  (no pun intended) call a Ragnar.  This involved six or seven teams in cars with one person running at a time (down to the two year olds for short distances) from each team. The goal was to be the first team to reach the Raspberry Shake stands eleven miles away. A great time was had by all…and the shakes were great!

Fun teams and great cousin and uncle bonding going on!





Unintentional photo bomber?



Then it was back to lots of great food at the pavilion, including Jonah Burgers and great conversations:



An exciting relay race started with the crawlers:




Some are faster than others….mostly depending on age:




Other races and competitions followed:





A dam-building contest was new this year with kid teams trying to build a dam that would hold water the longest!







See the judge there in the middle?

This dam held the longest:




There was also a spectacular sand castle building contest and so many fun bonding activities. Including just beach activities….sunning, reading, taking, water skiing, horseback riding and just enjoying being together!

...including a horse ride on the beach with Grandfather and our main horse lover Ana (next to one-year-old Dean) .









We all enjoyed an entertaining talent show….including great dancers….




A boy who is an amazing self-taught saxaphone player…




Some budding piano players….





Kids who learned to play the ukelele during their l o n g ride across the country from Boston in a mini van.  (Somebody needs a bathroom break . )



And even a cirque de solelil performance. These girls worked on this amazing routine for three months!  Wish I knew how to do video. It was really amazing! 

The few parents even showed off their kite-making talent! 



the tennis tournament is always so fun! All adults (except me with a bad knee) play. Julie and Eli are the couple to beat but no one was able to pull it off this year.




Which brings us to our last day on the 24th of July which just happened to be a Sunday. A perfect day for a baptism in the lake of our little eight year old Lyla.

That post is coming next! 

Memorial Day and a Swenson Reunion

I LOVE Memorial Day! First it’s good to spend time appreciating those who gave their lives for the sake of freedom. The television and radio coverage did a great job of commemorating this day. Actually they probably do that every year but this is the first year I remember having time to see and hear it. War is so tragic! And we lose sight of some of the courageous and terrible things that happened there if we are not reminded!

At a Memorial Museum in Vietnam several years ago, as we were watching a documentary about the evacuation of Americans and the sadness they felt of leaving their friends to an uncertain fate, an old Vietnamese grandmother told me that her grandchildren don’t believe that the war there really happened. It’s too far from their every day life! Which is a blessing and a curse. We should always remember the brave souls who died there on both sides!

Because we’ve had a flood at our main home at Bear Lake, we went there on Memorial Day weekend to check on things. A water heater pipe had burst and filled the downstairs with water. Since no one lives there except in the summer, we discovered it after probably two or three weeks of that house filling up with water. To spare you the details, luckily our good friend LaMont who built the house is over there working with a friend to put it back together again before our first guests arrive on June 15!

BUT it was a great chance to get to the Bloomington Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend where my parents and so many of our relatives are buried, My terrific Mother loves fake flowers (to be kind I should say silk flowers) so I thought she might like these at her simple grave in a beautiful spot overlooking the lake. Wish I’d have had something to whisk that dead grass away:

And my dad, a died-in-the-wool farmer would probably think that flowers were frivolous since he’s not there, but we went ahead and “decorated” his grave anyway because we sure love this wonderful guy!

I also have a dear half brother who was 25 years older than I and who never lived with us but he is buried there too! He was such a sweet soul who got caught up in alcohol addition before anybody knew what to do about it!


This year I found my great great grandmother’s grave in Bloomington. We had done lots of research on her this year because Charity lives only about an hour and half away from where she was born in Batheaston, Wiltshire, England.  I posted about our delightful journey to her homeland earlier, so it was exciting to actually find her grave this year! 

Ellen Sarah Harding Aland was my Father’s Mother’s grandmother. To make a life-story short…she gave birth to 13 children, 8 of whom died in childhood. She immigrated to America and settled in Bloomington where more children were lost. What a life! I yearn to know the details but no journal was kept so we will never know the depth of her sorrows or joys. The record of her age on her gravestone is fascinating!



Another favorite great Grandmother was Elizabeth Petersen, my father’s father’s mother who immigrated from Denmark after losing the oldest of their six children. Four other little children died of the measles while crossing the ocean. With only one child remaining, Elizabeth crossed the plains, walking most of the thousand miles from St. Louis to Utah, pregnant. After arriving in Utah she gave birth to three more children in very meager circumstances. Her youngest child was my Grandfather Frederick. I’m so glad she kept growing! What a woman!


Across from her lie my grandparents and other family members



The next morning we were off to Logan, about 90 minutes away where we took part in a grand celebrations of Rick’s mother, Grandma Ruthie’s family. Her parents, Margaret and Dan Swenson built a beautiful home and family of ten children just below Utah State University. About 40 years ago, the University bought the home from the family and destroyed all that beautiful woodwork and craftsmanship. Her father was the head of the woodworking department at USU and built the house himself.  The thing about it is that their oldest daughter May became a world famous poet. Through the urgings of Rick’s brother Chris and people in the English department at USU who are avid fans of May’s work, they are now hoping to rebuild the house as a place for visiting professors, especially visiting poets.

Through a lot of hard work by the organizers, 130 descendants of Dan and Margaret Swenson were gathered together at the beautiful new Jon M. Huntsman School of Business for a celebration and reunion.

Here is the President of the University welcoming us in the L. Tom Perry Board Room. 


The views were gorgeous!


And below are the two living children of the original 10 Swenson children each pledging $5000 each for the cause. They are adorable and pack a big punch in that family, even though they are barely 5 feet tall!



I wish I had taken more pictures for our children who couldn’t come to see. Some of these relatives we hadn’t seen for twenty years!  But luckily a dear family friend (Josh’s buddy from high shcool) who love and helped care for Grandma Ruthie stood in for Josh and took some great pictures of our darling cousins, aunts and uncles!

Thanks to Dave (on the right below) for sending these pictures.
We had never met these two babies!

Don’t you think Uncle Adam makes a perfect pediatrician?

Look at those fun bouncy houses in the background there. The kids had a ball with those, as well as a climbing wall and all the Aggie Ice Cream they could eat! 



The kids had a blast on this climbing wall too!



Afterward, we gathered at the May Swenson ‘bench’ (if you look hard you can see the engraving under Eliza’s feet) the graves of Rick’s parents and grandparents including the Matriarch and Patriarch of the Swenson family, Dan and Margaret Swenson. The huge pine trees overhead make it hard to get a good picture but we love being there!



It was a Memorial Day to remember!