Summers are for Family Reunions

For 20 years now, I’ve been attending Johnson family reunions. I’ve accumulated hundreds of happy memories of family and fun over those 20 years. This year was no different. Our family has certainly changed in dynamic and number over the years, and our reunions have gotten shorter and much simpler, but what hasn’t changed is the love…or the level of competition…or the amount of food consumed. Some things never change…

There may have been less than a foot of these sandwiches left at the end of the two days. Lots of mouths to feed!

The cups trend made an appearance at the reunion thanks to these girls. “You’re gunna miss me when I’m gone.”

Mom and Dad brought some of the favorite activities for the littlest family members…a flying balloon contraption and a giant, inflatable hamster ball. Both big hits. Keep in mind that 70% of our 154 reunion attendees were 15 and under, 58% of those being 5 and under. There were littles crawling everywhere!

Cousin Matt was the committee member in charge of games this year. He knocked his assignment out of the park! There was no lack of good, stiff, fun and competition to be had. The Johnsons get serious about keeping score. (And eating chips, apparently.)

Minute-to-win-it using dry spaghetti noodles and empty soda cans. It appears here that MK and Kristen have this skill perfected, but don’t let this picture fool you. This exercise was tricky!

Brother Andrew was assigned tee shirt duty. Nice to have a family member who does this for a living. Loved the shirts! First names of all family members were listed in alphabetical order on the back. We tend to duplicate names in this family. The winner of the girl names is “Emily” with five of them in the family; and there are five boys named “Jeffrey,” even though one of those is spelled with a G.  It’s harder to find names that are not repeated at least once or twice. It can get confusing sometimes!

Most Johnsons (excluding me) are tennis players. No reunion would be complete with out a tennis tournament.

 

There is actually some pretty decent tennis to watch.

 
Our over-all tournament winners…team Alex and Rachel. I love Rachel’s enthusiasm here. She really captures the rapture of a Johnson winning anything.

My boys love uncle Brad. As do I.

Although it was 100 degree out, the die-hards played some intense games of Ultimate Frisbee and Muggle’s Quid ditch. Yes, you read that right…Muggles Quid ditch is a tradition now. Created many years ago by cousin Mike, since it’s genesis it’s been a part of our reunions. We’re nerds.

Me and brother Eric. Great job with food committee Eric (and Emily!)

MK found plenty of babies to mug on.

My mom and 6 of her 7 siblings Kathy, Brad, Paul, Scott, Rob, and Todd. (Uncle Rand couldn’t make it from Texas).

I love this family! I wish I had a group shot of all 150 something attendees, but I didn’t get a decent one. We so missed the many family members who couldn’t be with us for one reason or another. With people spread out all over the country it’s unlikely that everyone will be all together in one place again in this life-time, but we are together in spirit, because….

…as Grandpa Vere used to say (and as printed on our tee shirts) “Family is Everything!”

Still.

It was a Dam Cloudy Day

 
This last weekend we hitched the jet skies up to the van and hauled them a few hours north to spend a couple days with family. Hyrum Dam is always my favorite (somewhat local) place to take the skis. It feels a bit like home up in the Valley of Cache so that may explain my preference.

We had to battle a few clouds and even a brief thunderstorm, but most of the time the sun shone on us in all it’s heated glory. We flew over the water disturbing flocks of innocent seagulls all morning and into the late afternoon.

On Friday we were joined at the dam by the Dickey crowd. Cami, Peter and Dani are in town on a visit from the east. I forgot that I had packed my big camera with me and so I didn’t get any pictures of the Friday fun. I regret this very much. I wish I could rewind and have a do-over. (Maybe Cami will share some of her shots because she’s a nice person).

On Saturday I was rummaging around in a random rubber-maid and I discovered my camera. We hosted my family next and it was a beautiful overcast morning. Once the rain ceased I had the chance to snap a few portraits of people I love. If you don’t see yourself in these photos, it does not mean I don’t love you. It means you were either camera shy or you were photographed in the first half hour before I discovered my camera was on the wrong setting. Oops! Gotta learn to check that!

This last photograph is not of someone I love, of course. I just wanted to show you how lonely the jet skies look floating in the rain. They were so sad until the sun finally triumphed, and then we worked them to death.