Family Reunion

Our family reunion was this weekend. Each year my mother's family gets together on the last weekend in July in Salado, Texas at a place called the Summers Mill Retreat and Conference Center. It's a neat little place with sleeping rooms for everyone as well as a "house" where we have a living room/TV, huge dining space, kitchen, etc. We all gather there to catch up on the year's activities, laugh, eat, drink and have fun.

We weren't able to make it last year, as both of the girls were sick, so I was really looking forward to this year's event to see family and friends I hadn't seen in two years. Plus, one of the cousins is almost exactly Ainsley's age (I think one month separates them), so I was looking forward to Ainsley seeing Lauren again.

Ainsley and Lauren became FAST friends...walking off holding hands within the first five minutes of our arrival. And, Addison had a BALL chasing after everyone and playing.



Addison's first bounce house. She LOVED it!



Then she decided to take a crack at hula hoops. She actually did pretty well considering these weigh almost as much as she does.



We always play games at the reunions, and this year Ainsley won the "Golf Ball Toss." She was very excited but a little overwhelmed when everyone was clapping and cheering for her.



My family tends to get a little "redneck" with one of our newer competitions - the "Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest" (or as most people say it when speaking quickly, the "Speed Sitting Contest"). This is my mother-in-law giving it her all. She was a great sport to go along with all this craziness.

My cousin, Matt, from Virigina giving seed spitting a try.

After the "Water Balloon Toss" everything went crazy and turned into a water balloon fight/mêlée. I'm totally shocked that my family would act like this (OK, not really).

My mom's good friend, Polly, brought a really fun game called "Redneck Golf." This is Matt climbing into the tree to retrieve one of the golf balls after he tossed it into the branches.

This is Matt getting it from the lower branch he tossed it into after retrieving it the first time. I never said my family was full of Rhodes Scholars.

Ainsley's sweet cousin Lauren blowing bubbles on Sunday morning.

Ainsley blowing bubbles for Addison to "catch."

More bubbles (can you tell we like bubbles?)

My mother-in-law giving the hula hoop a try. I was pretty impressed with how good she was...

Linda helping Addison with the hula hoop. It's so big that this picture is comical, but Addison REALLY wanted to be like the big kids!

Overall, the reunion was a huge success. We had a lot of fun, and I'm already looking forward to next year. I still can't believe my in-laws came along. They seemed to have a good time, but I think I'm glad they didn't see this part of my family until we'd been married almost 10 years. This way maybe they won't encourage Derek to file for divorce and run as far away as possible.