Family Reunion

 We attended our first family reunion on Adam's side at a venue here.

 It was a good location for everyone...right in the middle between Dallas and Kansas. (Rather expensive though.)

The photographs of the property show about 5 cabins. So Adam and I were SURE, ABSOLUTELY SURE we were going to end up on a pull out couch somewhere.

But to our absolute SHOCK we all pretty much had our OWN spaces. The cabin above where we slept, was split into three living spaces.

 We had our own living room, kitchenette, bedroom, and bathroom. We couldn't have been happier.

Until I did this:

I broke my phone case too. Now I am opposed to concrete floors. 

Consequently, I was timid about using my camera all week. Ugh. So some of these photographs were taken by my sister-in-law, Shayla.

Below is the main cabin. It had a big kitchen with industrial appliances, a "ballroom" with tons of space. 

Outside was a fire pit...

...seating and tables for dining...

...and it all overlooked the creek.
The fireflies at night were a wonder to look at too. They were flying to the very tops of the trees and all around.

The owners had a friendly dog who made himself at home with us and liked to take naps on top of the tables outside. Photo by Shayla

On a couple of days, Adam woke up early to go fishing with his brother.

It was a bad time of year for fishing. But he STILL caught something.

We found an awesome "water feature" coming down the hill and hiked up it. I'm not going to post pictures but the rock formations that the water ran through was pretty cool. On another day I would have liked to go up with my bathing suit on and cool off there.

The family drove about an hour to visit a stroller friendly cavern.

Below and above: the cavern entrance.

A river runs through the cavern...I thought that was unique. They don't know from where the river originates. The ceilings are just tall enough to walk under.

I liked it, but also it's probably the least impressive cavern/tour I've been to. I'm not sure I would recommend it. We hear there are normally bats in the cave too, but again, we came at the wrong time.

Back at the cabins, everybody enjoyed spending time down near the water. Photo by Shayla

Photo by Shayla

Photo by Shayla

We were assigned with Larissa and Dayne's family to do activities, lunch, dinner, and evening activities one Wednesday. We chose water activities. Photo by Shayla

Water balloon volleyball of course. And holding babies—plenty to choose from. Photo by Shayla

Pass a sponge of water backwards and fill up a bucket. (Looking at everyone's different expression in this photo cracks me up. Even Adam.) Photo by Shayla

Who can use up their soap the fastest? (Then we poured ice into the pool along with marbles and asked teams to pick up the marbles with their toes. Photo by Shayla

Adam was a great MC as per usual. My SIL kept commenting on how funny he is. Yep. That's Adam. Photo by Shayla

Spray off shaving cream with water guns. Photo by Shayla

You know...fun stuff like that. We also played QUEST after dinner which was hilarious. It's a game show we played on a cruise ship and it can only be played with a large group of people so it was perfect. If you want more details contact me. It's super easy.
And then Dayne had a collection of fireworks which we set off later that night along with sparklers.

There were other activities, of course, throughout the week. We had a good time.

Photo by Shayla

My Mother's Mother's Mother's Mother's..........

Repost: 

For an activity at church, us ladies were asked to follow our family line through our mother's mother's mother's mother etc. back as far as we could go and then bring something to share or show that we learned about her. Through FamilySearch.org I was able to go back 7 generations and found Jacobine Olsdotter who lived in Norway. There was a little information about her but I also researched what sort of foods she would have eaten in the 1800s. Then I learned how to make Norwegian Potato Lefse and took it to share with the group. 

It's been a fun way to feel connected to my great x's 4 grandma. 

P.S. A few days later I went back to read up on Jacobine's husband and realized I could have gone back 4 more generations! Sheeesh.

P.P.S. This activity was a total hit. Our attendance doubled. I think because it was personal, and it invited each woman to talk about herself and her family is what made it appealing.

Overstocked Eggs

Did you know stores THROW OUT exra stock? Things they can't sell at deeply discounted prices? Yeah. They do. It's a tax thing. But a lady who is employed by such stores tries to save these items and donate them somehow somewhere. That's how our Relief Society (the women's group in the LDS church) ended up with HUNDREDS of plastic easter eggs. Ummm...I never thought I'd have to solve this kind of problem.

After some research I realized we could use them to mold soap. Each woman could keep one for herself and we'd package and donate the rest to the local women's shelter.

NONE of us have done any kind of soap making. Melt and pour soap seemed SO EASY that we decided we'd be able to wing it! (Scary, I know.)

For my part, I brought ingredients for two kinds, cinnamon vanilla oatmeal—which smells good enough to eat—seen above—and citrus grapefruit. I love food scented soaps.

I grated three lemons, two oranges, and one grapefruit (made enough to share) and put the rinds in the oven on the lowest setting to dehydrate. It took around 3 hours.  Too bad the color variation didn't come through. But the smell was wonderful.

I then bought a tiny vile of grapefruit scent at Michael's to make the soap delicious to the nose. During the activity I added all this to my little cup of melted goat's milk soap with some coloring—which had been donated too—and dribbled it into my egg to set. Below is the cute result. (It's not a whole egg shape because...well, I was distracted.) This is the one I kept, which I'm excited to use.
(Don't you love the masticated fruit in the photo background? Now I have to figure out what to do with THAT. Heh.)

Below are all the donation eggs before unmolding. We twisted the pointy end of a pair of scissors into the top to create the a hole (much easier than drilling which we also tried). And taped the bellies of the eggs to prevent leaking. We each had mini cups to fill with melted soap and used popsicle sticks to stir in the other ingredients. Then poured our soap from the cups into the eggs.

I hear we should have sprayed the inside of the eggs with witch hazel for an easier release from the form. The next day I was able to get the tops off easily but the bottoms were FRUSTRATINGLY STUBBORN. I had to set them in hot dishrags from the microwave to melt them a touch. With 40 eggs to do, it took too long. Lesson #1 learned.

And oodilallie! Didn't they turn out beautifully? So many scents and colors. Among them were: Gingerbread, Maraschino cherry, Rain, Orange blossom, vanilla etc.

But the tops of the soap came out messy and unprofessional looking and many of them had pieces of plastic stuck in them from hole-making. Eee. So I just sliced them off. I've convinced myself it gave them a sort of branded look. Lesson #2 learned.

When we packaged them, I decided to throw together a little pattern for the inside of the folded tag to make their shape feel even more purposeful.

(Next time I'd fill them upside down. Then if we have to do any slicing, it will be the bottoms and they'd sit upright quite nicely.)

We wrote the scents on the back of the tags.

Melt and pour soaps are as easy as everybody claims. Plus they're fun. I'll probably make a few more just for the heck of it. I'm glad we could make this a service project as well. That is one of the main goals of Relief Society after all.

But there are still hundreds of eggs left. Bath bombs anyone?

Jamaica

A cruise took us to Jamaica this year! Since sight-seeing isn't great there, we decided to bus over to an all-inclusive for the day.
I only wish we could have stayed longer. The price tag was a bit high for the little time we had and I don't feel we were able to take advantage of everything available. Oh well!
Password (case sensitive): Jammin


Jammin from Anna Zenk on Vimeo.