Family History In Real Time: Family Reunion Photo Shoot 2016

We had a wonderful Family Reunion this summer in the Heber City area of Utah! We had been planning it for over a year. It was our first big one for five years. Although we see each other in smaller groups more regularly it is hard to get everyone there with work schedules and great distances to travel. Even still Laura's husband could not make it until after our reunion. So we stayed an extra week in Utah so we could be with him too. We were gone for 20 days but it seemed so much longer because we were doing so many things the whole time.

We rented a log cabin that was supposed to sleep 25. Perhaps it could have but the place was over marketed and we essentially found it quite disappointing when we first arrived. We stayed there from a Tuesday afternoon to the Saturday Morning of the same week. Once we got use to the rustic qualities we quite enjoyed it. The kitchen was very nice and the dining living area was great too. The bathrooms and bedrooms left a lot to be desired. It became apparent that the person we rented it from doesn't come often to check on things. Also the neighbors confirmed that. It did have a wonderful birch tree grove where we were able to take our family pictures. We soon discovered that that part of the back of the house actually belonged to the neighbors but they graciously let us take our photos there.

Our photographer is a friend of Jennifer's and the nicest lady. Wendy took our photos and they should be back sometime in the coming week. In the meantime she tolerated us taking our own shots of the various groupings while she took the real ones.

We thought our little phones did a pretty nice job of capturing some of them so I am adding them here to kind of kick start my journaling about this reunion. After this on another post there will be a lot of random snapshots of the various things we did.

We had a theme for this reunion and it was Birthdays! That seems a little odd I'm sure, but we did it in honor of Jim's Mom who is turning 90 in November. We had 4 generations represented at the reunion. There were 18 of us there. Jim's mom, Jim and me, our three kids, their spouses, minus Robert and all of our grandkids. This has not happened enough in the 19 years our three have been married. But everyone has had great life adventures, each of them living out of the country for extended periods of time and we have somehow made it work.

Where that was most evident was in our grandchildren. They all love each other so much and had a wonderful time together. Seeing that for Jim and me was the very best reward we could have imagined. The photo below begin with Jim's mother and all of her great grandchildren except Thomas who is the grandson of Jim's brother. This photo means a lot to us. We are so happy that Jim's mom could come and that she had a really good time.