McBride Merriment: Family reunion

     This past week has been a very busy week for us. Well, okay, busy may be the wrong word, but it feels that way. On Monday we got all packed up and drove 6 hours away (though it took us much longer) to Vail, Colorado for a family reunion. It is my Grandparents (Hiatts) 60th anniversary in August, and my Grandpa has had a dream for a while to see all of his family gathered in Vail, so his children made that happen for him this year. There weren't very many organized, everyone do everything together events. We had dinners (and a final breakfast on Thursday) together, but other than that, there were various hikes, biking trails, parks, etc. that smaller groups of everyone would get together to go to. There were 55 of us there, and I know a decent amount of my cousins were missing, but 55 still made for enough to split up into groups and still have enough people. My little family mainly stayed around the Vail Racquet Club (where we were staying) and played on the playground. However, we did head over to the main Vail Village to see some of the gardens, and the park there, and then Nathaniel, Jessica and I went on the Gondola ride up to the top of the mountain. We were a little worried at first about that one. I wasn't sure how enclosed the gondola was, and so with Jessica's tendency to squirm and run around, and try to get "down" if we hold her on our laps, if it wasn't completely closed in, there was no way we were going. Luckily it was.
     I felt that we had lots of fun. Nathaniel and I shared a condo with my sister and her family, so it was fun for our kids to get a little better acquainted, and to get to know their aunt and uncle more. My sister's husband became known (to Jessica) as "the Brice", and she even pointed him out in the family picture at my parents house yesterday (2 days after we got back). She also warmed up a lot to Grandpa (my dad), and would continually ask for "Gam-pa" and "Gah" ('Gah' is grandma). Towards the end, she even started seeing my mom, and would say "Gam-pa". She even keeps begging for him now that we're home as well. It was definitely nice to see everyone. Most of my Hiatt family lives in North Carolina (or at least on the East Coast, some live in Virginia) so I don't get to see them very often. I think the last time I saw a lot of the people there was in the summer of '05, so 6 years ago, at the last reunion I went to. I loved seeing everyone, and hearing the stories from Grandma and Grandpa (my grandparents) of how they met and started dating. It was a lot of fun.
     The drive back didn't take us as long start-to-finish as driving out there did, but it was worse because Jessica, who is normally fine in the car, decided that she would cry for about the last hour-and-a-half to 2 hours. Maybe it just felt that long, I don't know. But she was tired, and had only taken an hour nap in the car (when her naps are usually 2 hours) so when we got home around 5, we put her straight to bed. Goodness gracious, I was tired though. the bed at the condo was a little on the hard side for me, so I didn't sleep very well the 3 nights we spent there.
     The week has continued to be busy because of grocery shopping (we were basically out of food), and we took Jessica swimming (she warmed up even more to the water, and even allowed us to put her in her floatie), and then I went grocery shopping again the next day (Friday was Costco, Saturday was everywhere else), and then also on Saturday we had another family get-together, this time for my Mom's side of the family, the Newbolds. Luckily, even though they mostly all live up in the North Salt Lake area (or past there) they decided to come down to my parent's house for this one, so we didn't have to drive a long distance again. I don't know if we would have made it had it been up there. But that was fun too. Okay now for the pictures. This is just a hodge-podge of pictures from the reunion. I didn't take very many sorry.

I tried to take a picture while we were driving, she was so cute sleeping cuddled up with her blanket and her stuffed tiger.

Yes, this one is a little dark, the sun was very bright, and it was taken with my phone. I didn't bother editing these at all. This was at a park on the way to Vail.