Family Renuion

This last weekend was our Baker (my mom's side) Family Reunion at Payson Lakes, Utah. Some of the highlights, (and maybe low lights) of the weekend were as follows:

Riding the very new Front Runner train from Roy to Woods Cross on the way down. The train is a double decker and is one of the fastest trains I have been on:

My sister bought all of the cousins in the Johnson Family bug catchers and it kept them entertained while we set up camp. Max's cousin Taesh caught him a caterpillar (which was in our tent) and put it in Max's bug catcher. Max loved that bug. He kept kissing it (from the outside of the container, of course). Here are the kids catching dragonflies:

Later that afternoon, Max tripped on one of his cousins and went down, face first. He had pants on, so the knees were saved from scrapes, and he managed to catch himself a little bit, but he still scraped both his top and bottom lips, plus he bonked his nose very hard and got his first bloody nose. Later, I noticed his nose was swollen and bruised all across the bridge. I started to panic that he had broken his nose! My cousin Terry is a nurse and said that even if he had, there wouldn't be much we could do for him. The next day, his nose looked better and so I don't think he broke it, just bruised it very badly.

Camping with a toddler is an adventure, to say the least. All Max wanted to do was play in the parking lot/road adjacent to our camp site. It got old trying to corral him away from this less than ideal play location. And forget about keeping him somewhat clean. The kid was a mess.

We managed to make it to the lake to swim the next day. Max loved being in the water, but it was so cold he was shivering. My dad blew up a couple of rafts (with a pump, not his mouth) and the kids took turns going out. Max got to stay with his dad through all of the rides and found it extremely peaceful. He might of even fallen asleep for a minute or 2.

The cousins all had a blast hanging out. We were only missing my brother's 2 little girls, and my other brother's baby girl. Here they are at the lake. Avery, Hayden, Abby, Hannah, Kenzie, Jonah, Taesh, Boden, and Max:

The one thing about camping, at least the way we do it, is that no one gets enough sleep. Here my dad fell asleep while holding my nephew, who is also asleep:

The worst part of the trip, though, was when Max threw up at about 4:00 a.m. the night before we left. It was smelly, and disgusting, and all over his favorite stuffed Elmo and blanket, not to mention that he then threw up all over me. Thank goodness he fell asleep after throwing up one more time and appeared to be fine as soon as he woke up the next morning. As if vomit is not bad enough, trying to clean it up in the middle of the night, in a tent, with 2 of my nephews also in our tent (amazingly enough, neither of them woke up) and without waking up the neighboring tents was nothing short of torture.

Still, I had a good time catching up with my cousins and aunts and uncles, when I had a chance. And it was fun seeing Max experience camping for the first time. I guess that's why we do these things!