Yoder Family Reunion

 We missed a few weeks again, due to General Conference throwing off all of our Sunday routines and then going on a family reunion campout and getting home late yesterday. Here's a brief overview:

We went back to having school, but tried to keep everyone busy enough that we wouldn't miss video games too much. It was only moderately successful, and Alison ended up spending a day in bed due to exhaustion, so we decided to slow down a bit. We talked to the kids (mostly the boys) about how, when they moan and complain and cry that there's nothing fun in the world except video games, we feel like they need less time playing video games and more time rediscovering all of the other fun things, and they volunteered to try and stop complaining by themselves. So we're all trying to adjust.

Grandma Julie and Grandma Sheila and Papa Mike, were all out of town for General Conference. But our tradition is to get together with family for conference, so Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday morning and afternoon we spent at Grandpa Craig's house. Rea is taking notes on all of the talks now; she really appreciates conference. The other kids hung around listening for names of God for jelly beans, and Sara recognized what all the talks were about for lollipops, but eventually they wandered off to play. Overall, it was a pretty successful conference, and we're very grateful to Grandpa Craig.

This past week we mostly got ready for camping; we were pretty busy all around. Thursday Grandma Julie was back and we went to her house, which was fun. We had carrot stew for Rea's birthday. When we got home, we opened her presents: lots of craft supplies, books, and a sign language dictionary for our ASL class (which she loves).

Friday Amy helped us get packed and out the door by 11, so we got to the campground by 4. The group site was shared by us, the Plastows, the Strombergs and Grandma Sheila and Papa Mike. The kids had a wonderful time running around as a group. We brought Rocket, and he was pretty good overall, although he thought he had to alert us every time someone walked around the campsite at night.

Grandma Yoder and Uncle James brought cool planes for the kids to fly on the sand dunes, which was so fun. Then Amy and Sheila helped the kids go rock climbing for the first time. Rea loved it; Sara refused; Timmy thought it was scary but good; Gideon got up a little and then decided to come down, but he had fun; and Boo liked swinging on the rope.

Saturday night we made tin foil dinners and a dutch oven cake for Rea's birthday. The foil dinners took a long time, as always, and most of the kids ate other food while waiting, but Mike and Alison and Rea enjoyed them. The dutch oven cake was a complete failure, but Grandma Yoder had brought a very nice sheet cake for a couple of birthdays, so we had cake anyway. Uncle James let everyone look through his telescope at Jupiter and the moon, which was awesome. Rea really wants to do more astronomy, and Mike likes astronomy, so hopefully they'll find time to do that.

We had a good time visiting with extended family on the Yoder side, and we were all tired when we got home. We had to go to Classical Conversation today, and the kids were all a little tired and grumpy. They went to bed promptly tonight, so hopefully tomorrow things will be back to normal.