Lamily Reunkein

Back in February, I was at Garrett's mission homecoming lunch in Pleasant View, talking and laughing and having a great time with my aunts and uncles and cousins. We started lamenting the fact that we don't have family reunions any more and everyone was saying that they'd like to get together again. I offered up my house as a venue for a weekend reunion and all that was left was to decide on a date.

After some deliberation, I decided the best time would be Labor Day weekend. I asked my buddy ChatGPT to help me create a nifty save-the-date graphic I could send everyone, and this is what it came up with:

It was so bad, I decided not to change anything, and started calling our upcoming gathering a Lamily Reunkein.

But when I asked for RSVPs, it turned out that almost nobody would be coming from out of town. And as the weekend drew closer, people started backing out from a portion of the weekend or the entire weekend. I was already burned out from all the traveling and entertaining we'd been doing over the summer, so instead of trying to host a tiny family reunion for a weekend, I decided to switch to an afternoon cookout on Labor Day in the hopes that more people could come if it was just for a few hours. A few people came. And we had a great time with them.

But Ben and Suz had been planning on coming for the whole weekend all along and they kept their plans! So most of the weekend was a bit of a reunion for the Utah siblings, and that was really fun too!

Suz was prepared with many pounds of yummy saltwater taffy!

On Saturday we divided into two boats to raft the Provo River. It was a beautiful day,

warm and sunny and not too hot! (And everyone felt much safer and had more fun than the

last time we were on the River in July.)

After rafting we had dinner at Malawi's Pizza in Riverwoods

and the kids played in the splash pad.

On Sunday morning, Whit helped with the farm chores.

We went to church, then had dinner together in the evening.

And no reunion would be complete without games!

We had three additional visitors join us for our cookout on Labor Day,

which also fell on Sydney's 6th birthday: Jeanne, Garrett, and Alysa.

Teddy was with us the whole week and ended up
spending most of the time in the house, since the
mosquitos were bad outside. The cats didn't appreciate
having him around, but he seemed as happy as usual.