Spokane 2017 Begins

A couple of weeks back I went to New York.  It was glorious.  I often noted in my mind, "This is so awesome!  Who lives like this?"

A week later the ten of us packed up and headed to Spokane, Washington for our annual Fox Family Reunion.  It too was awesome!  And once again, I thought, "Who is lucky enough to actually live like this?"

I guess we are!  A family talent show, cousins playing for hours and hours on end, aunts and uncles talking, swimming, boating, roller skating.  60+ family members thoroughly enjoying one another's company with genuine good feelings towards one another.  We feel very blessed to be a part of such a remarkable family.

This was the first reunion without Abe's dad, Jim Fox, who passed away unexpectedly last September.  I really missed talking with him.  I always felt very loved, encouraged and appreciated by him.  We are so glad to still have Grandma Fox!

Cousins swimming in the hotel pool.  

Another picture of Grandma.  I love to see Abe and his mom together.  He loves her so much and they have a lot of similarities.  I think she is why he is so kind and good and detailed and visionary.

Strike a pose with your old school roller skates, Pete!

Renting out Roller Valley for a couple of hours is a favorite activity for the family.  

George was determined to do it all by himself this year and he DID!  He is a roller skater now!

The same cannot be said for this one.  Age has not improved his comfort level when his feet are not firmly planted on the ground.  He slowly, painfully and quite awkwardly made his way once around the rink and that was it.  He has so many gifts... but skating is not one of them.  That's okay.

Greta loved the breeze in her hair as we strolled her around the rink.

A little limbo action.

George and Asher.

There were 10 pizzas that disappeared faster than they arrived.

Tiffany is holding her first grandbaby.  I'm holding my last baby.  The next generation of babies are starting to come.  I've referred to the last babies of our generation as the stragglers!  It is fun to see the generations crossing.

Ellori, Kyli, Lori, and Greta!

Driving the golf cart on the hill is super fun.  Remarkably, no grandchild has run over another grandchild (to my knowledge at least).  

The youth temple trip is another tradition that Grandpa Fox always organized and loved.  I was glad the teens were able to go again at this reunion. 

Everett, Gentri, Elinor, and Mason.

Bethany, Julia, Ruth, Lauryn, Lindsey, and Kyli.

The Fox family talent show is a much looked forward to event!  There is a delightfully wide range of talents exhibited.  George's first public performance on the violin.  Bethany is his teacher.

Bethany and Elinor performed "Rather Be" on violin and piano.

Cannon is loaded with talent.  He sings, he dances, he plays piano.

But he decided to crack his whip for the talent show.  That was good too, but we had to clear a pretty wide circumference and I think Grandma thought Cannon might hit her.

Cousin Sophie caught a snake shortly before Clark arrived in Spokane and then spent the rest of the reunion searching for Clark to talk to and hunt for more snakes.  They were adorable together!  Clark helped Sophie with her talent-- showing off a snake they caught together!

Nine years ago Mama Mia was in the theaters.  The moms went to go see it and laughed and had a wickedly fun time together.  The idea was born that night to work up a number for the talent show.  

We had too much fun choreographing a lipsync!

Our little girls loved our accessories and thought their moms were something special!

Bethany is on the far right.

Nine years later, the girls surprised the family with a Mama Mia revival!

SO MUCH FUN!  They were adorable and we thought they were pretty special!

I will only say that a Mama Mia sequel is planned for release next summer.  I'm pretty sure the moms will go see it and there will be another performance! 

The talent show was followed by a family dance party on the lawn.  

Cannon and George were showing off their hip hop moves.

"Row! Row! Row!"

Baby girl finally conked out on her Daddy during the dance party.

It was a really, really good first day and a half in Spokane.  We all slept well throughout the reunion.

Yellowstone National Park 2017

ROAD TRIP!!!!!
We love long family car rides!  Usually we drive to Spokane every summer and make the drive in about 11 hours.  We make pretty good time.  This year we broke up the drive over two days by stopping in Yellowstone for a couple days and a night.

Greta did not love her car seat and was sad for much of the first day.  But by the second day she was so tired that she napped better.

Our first stop was the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone.
Nine years ago we took went there when Cannon was a new baby.

Here's the picture to prove it.

Bethany has grown up just a little.

Greta and the bear have matching teeth.

I had to share this picture.  I'm sure this man, who did the "bird show" loves his job.  I'm sure he loves his birds, but this was the WORST animal show I've ever seen.  It was a serious snooze fest.

It was somewhat comical. I think I was still in bad selfie mode.

There is a lot of seriously cool geological stuff to see in Yellowstone.   This was boiling hot water.

The most impressive to me was the Grand Prismatic Spring.  We'd never been up to it before and it was totally worth the hike.

My favorite picture of the day... Why is George primed to dive into the Grand Prismatic Spring?

It was a strange but delightful mix of cool breezes and warm breezes coming off the spring.

We arrived at Old Faithful just after it went off, so we had a quite a wait before it went off again.  Fortunately, we could trust that it would go off again.  It is Old Faithful.

I call this the smirky smiling picture.  Most of us had food in our mouths.

We were at the height of the tourist season so it got pretty crowded.  Once again, George appears to be posed to dive.  Perhaps he's mentally preparing to join the swim team.
Now at this point we'd been waiting a while.  We were getting restless... and silly.  Shortly before Old Faithful went off, I jokingly dared the children to yell and scream celebratory things when the geyser went off.  Things like, "YES!  I CAN'T BELIEVE IT HAPPENED!  DO YOU GUYS SEE THIS?

In hindsight, I shouldn't have made a dare to teenagers whose brains aren't fully developed.
Also, I sort of thought more people would scream and cheer.  It was pretty deadly silent.  Except that all the people sitting around us will have my charming daughter Bethany's shrill voice screaming on their recording of this miracle of nature.  Live and learn.

We basically avoided eye contact with everyone on our way back to the car.

We entered the park from West Yellowstone, but we left it from the north entrance where stands the Roosevelt Arch.  The rest of us had never heard of this grand arch, but Abe seemed to feel it was very important and it became a family joke and we drove under it about six times laughing harder each time.  Abe was a good sport about it.

We got way too much benefit and enjoyment from the arch alone!

George was the beneficiary of Bethany's recently acquired swim instructor skills.

Good old fashioned chicken fighting.

We didn't see much wildlife beyond elk and a couple of distant bison.

Our last stop before heading up to Spokane was Mammoth Hot Springs.  Pretty cool stuff.

Clark is happiest out in nature.

Peter, however, had had enough.  We squished a lot of Yellowstone into a day and half, but everyone agreed it was great fun and very interesting.  Even the slow and monotone bird show.

Peter was cracking us up at the Wendy's in Missoula.  Sometimes the older children delight in teaching Peter to say inappropriate things.  And darn it all if it isn't pretty funny.  He knows not what he says.  Actually, he does, but that sort of makes it even funnier.  Please don't judge until you've tried to raise teenagers and toddlers at the same time.  

While I Was Away...

While I was gone, my family survived.  Heck, they did more than survive--- they partied!  

Truth:  They lived on Eggo waffles and microwave popcorn.  They consumed 44 bags of microwave popcorn in under week.  That's an average of 8 bags of popcorn a day.  Which is really only one bag of popcorn per person, but still.  That's a lot of popcorn.  Is popcorn lung still a thing?

They also watched four seasons of Phineas and Ferb.  So, yeah, they made pretty good choices in my absence.

Abe sent me pictures like this while I was away.  I think he thought he was doing a nice thing.  But pictures like this were hard to see when I was away from my little Greta.

I was happy to hear that she was just fine while I was gone and a HUGE shout out to Faith who really took the reigns of taking care of Greta when Abe was working.

George's team won a soccer game, which is not terribly important, but it's more fun to win than to lose.  

Our family was spread far and wide that week.  I was gone to New York, Bethany and Elinor were gone to girls camp and Abe and Clark were the adult leaders at Cub Country Day Camp for Cannon and Co.  It was a busy week!

Love, love, love!

I wasn't surprised to hear how much Cannon loved Cub Country.  

Oh, the dirt!  Filthy boys are happy boys, I suppose.  

Nice to see that they took a break from Phineas and Ferb for some fresh air.

Clark riding the zip line at our cool new park.  He took the week off of work to help out at home, for which I was very grateful.  Even if he was the one who approved and encouraged the Phineas and Ferb marathon.  Whatever.

The before picture as the girls headed off to camp.

The after picture; Home safe and sound.  Elinor got pretty sick with a sinus infection up at camp, but a little rest and relaxation at home and she quickly recovered.  I heard such nice things from Young Women's leaders about both of these girls that I felt very pleased and proud of them.  They are good girls and we enjoy them immensely. 

A little drive up a canyon.  

I arrived home on Saturday afternoon.  Sunday evening we enjoyed a family dinner over at my sister's house and then Monday morning we took off for Spokane.

It was wonderful to be with my three siblings.  I wish we could all be together more often, but I'll take it when I can get it.  Life certainly has it's challenges, but it is a blessing to have family who will love you through whatever comes your way.  

It does my heart good to see fun cousins playing together.  

Greta and Jules back together again!