Family Reunion/ wedding week 2011

Second trip to Utah in 2011 served many purposes.  To reunite Alissa with her family, attend the family reunion at Dustin and my Dad's Heber City cabin, and participate in all the wedding events for Haley and Adrian.

The reunion was a blast- any time my family gets together we have crazy fun.  For me, the funnest was seeing the cousins together playing and spending time with my mom's family- the Mechams.

The cabin was amazing- SO beautiful up there in the canyon east of Heber.  I kind of wish I wasn't writing this knowing that a year later the cabin would be sold and therefore no longer of use to us, because it only makes me sad thinking about it.  It was great even just for the one time.

Here's the whole Mecham bunch with the Queen Bee- Grandma Joy- in the middle.  Again, that's the sad thing about so much time passing between when the event happened and when you write about it.  I attended my sweet Grandma's funeral only 2 months ago and its so hard still to think of her as gone.  She still is such a source of inspiration and JOY in my life- always will be.  I'm so glad Annabelle has her name.



Now, this may come across as my own personal opinon, but I'll bet if you asked anyone else at that reunion program that night up in the mountains, they'd agree- the skit that I did with my siblings was the absolute highlight of the night!  My mom has 3 brothers and a sister, so the five of us represented them well in gender, but also, we each practiced imitating their mannerisms to the point that we literally had people ROFL.  Randy (played by Dave) couldn't hear anything anyone was saying nor could anyone understand a word he was saying.  Jerry (played by Dustin) organized a game of "hand and foot" and as hard as he tried, couldn't get Melody (played by Haley) to stop humming and singing long enough to play her hand!  Jim, who had funny nicknames for all the sibs, called Karen (played by me), Kareneenee catchateenee applejack johnfeenee!  It was about as much fun as we had had together in a long time.

I almost forgot to mention our family photo shoot!  That was quite a feat- getting everyone together and having these taken.  It was long overdue.  A lot changes in a year, though.  Dave and Amy have Coco, and Dustin and Lyna are divorced.  That's life in a big family for sure!

A view of Mt. Ranier from the airplane.  Leo much prefers the friendly skies to the long boring roads.