Weekly Review July 27 '18

A lot happened this week and there will be a lot of pictures in this post. It was a great week, getting to see and spend time with a lot of family.

Since we had such a long day on Friday and were up so late, we didn't have any trouble getting onto "Utah time"--we didn't wake up super early on Saturday. That morning, I went to a baby shower for my niece Anna, along with most of the other females in the extended family. It was fun to see and visit with family and to see Anna's new house. The baby shower had an outer space theme. All the decorations and the refreshments were very clever and I should have taken pictures, but I didn't. I did take a few pictures of Anna's kittens and of the view of Utah lake from her house:

After the shower, I spent the rest of the day consulting with Amy and Shellie about the meals for the reunion, finishing up the grocery list and then planning the quantities of everything we needed to buy. It was a big job and took a long time. After we finally finished the list, Mom and I went to Costco to buy some of the nonperishable items, and later that evening Frank and I went to Walmart to get the rest of the nonperishable items. (Tim & Rachelle, Amy, and Shellie bought all the perishable items on Monday.) In between the two shopping trips, Frank & I went out to dinner with Amy & Nate. All the cousins had gathered at different houses to have dinner and spend the night so all the kids were gone. Seth was at Tim's house with the boys closest to his age although we decided it would be better for him not to spend the night--we went and picked him up later.

Although we were staying at Amy's house, we went to church at Mom's ward on Sunday. Mom's ward meets a little later in the day so we weren't trying to get ready for church at the same time as Amy's family, and we also got to see Curtis's and Ben's families. (Scott came too.) After church we had dinner with Amy's family--both Scott and Tanner joined us for that--and then we all gathered at a park in Lehi with extended Johnson and Pew family for visiting. It was really nice, and we stayed until it got dark. I only took one picture, though. I was enjoying visiting too much to stop to take pictures.

Monday was the "official" start of the reunion--that was the day we all gathered at a large house in Mapleton that had been rented so that we could all stay together under one roof for a few days. We could arrive at the house as early as 1:00. The morning was busy with doing some laundry, packing the things we were taking to the house, and various other errands. I spent most of the morning typing up more food committee related things, such as a list of the work teams for each meal and so forth. When we headed to the house, we had to stop in Provo to buy a part for Frank's CPAP--he had to switch out one piece before we left and he had forgotten to bring the seal that went with it, so up until then his CPAP didn't work. (He didn't discover the missing piece until late Friday night and the place he could buy it wasn't open until Monday.)

We were one of the first to arrive at the house, and we wandered around calling "hello? hello?" for quite a while before we found Scott and Amanda sitting in the game room. The house was huge and unbelievable! At first I thought I was never going to figure out my way around, but after walking all over it a few times to take a video (which took a full 19 minutes!) and to take pictures, I had it mostly figured out. However, you could literally walk around for a long time looking for someone if you needed to find a particular person! (Especially if they were walking around at the same time!) I often had to resort to texting to find Frank when I needed him and I would go hours without seeing Seth and had to track him down occasionally. However, you need a lot of space to house nearly 60 people and the house was great for that! I took pictures of everything when we first arrived (even the bathrooms) because I didn't want to forget it. I'm including them here; if you don't want to wade through all of them, just scroll down (a long ways!):

The front of the house:

Family & informal dining area:

 

Cool spiral staircase leading from the family room down to the game room:

Sun room off the family room:

The game room:

Basement bedroom and bathroom:

Indoor pool (in the basement):

The house was full of little nooks & crannies like this one in the basement, next to one of the staircases:

A room in the basement where more people could sleep; most of the granddaughters slept here:

The exercise room (also in the basement; June was trying it out):

Two bathrooms and a laundry room adjacent to the pool, which included towel storage:

Another view of the exercise room, from another doorway:

Indoor racquetball / basketball court in the basement, which also doubled as a music hall while we were there:

One of many staircases. There were at least three (including the spiral one) between the basement and the main floor:

Patio in the backyard:

Large garage:

"Apartment" off of the garage; there will be pictures of the apartment later:

Another funny "nook"; I think this one was in a hallway on the main floor, next to some windows that overlooked the racquetball / basketball court:

Looking down into the basketball / racquetball court (and Izak practicing his guitar):

One of the main level bathrooms:

Main level bathroom, across from the bedrooms:

Another main level bedroom:

Another main level bathroom, this one was near the kitchen, next to the main level laundry room:

Main level laundry room:

Most of the house up until now has been kind of 1980's (it definitely could use some updating) but the front part of the house was really fancy. Here is the main hallway leading from the kitchen / family room area to the front foyer (one set of stairs to the basement on the right of the photo):

Fancy "powder room" near the front foyer:

The formal dining room:

"Butler's pantry" in between the formal dining room and the kitchen. There is definitely a butler's pantry in my imaginary dream home!:

Front doors foyer, including a grand staircase to the upstairs bedrooms. Wish I had brought my ball gown!:

Formal living room:

View of the front lawn from the living room:

More formal living room:

More front foyer, plus upstairs hallways to some of the bedrooms:

One of the upstairs bedrooms, plus an adjacent bathroom which also connected to another hallway. This bathroom was right across the hall from the bedroom Frank & I slept in:

Upstairs bedroom where Frank & I slept (no one slept in the bunkbed in the corner, but isn't it cute?):

Open area between the hallway leading to our bedroom and the bunk room (door to the bunk room on the right of the first photo), which included a few more little nooks, and a much less grand staircase which led to the main level and to the basement:

The bunk room where most of the grandsons slept (included more nooks & crannies, and a loft and small powder room):

Another view of the staircase and open area outside the bunk room. The little short stairs led to a hallway that turned a corner and led to the bedroom where Frank & I slept:

This hallway was behind the large mirror / statue in the front foyer. It led from the two upstairs bedrooms already seen to the master suite and another adjacent bedroom:

From this side, the mirror is a window! View of the foyer from the window:

The master suite doors:

View of the opposite hallway from the master bedroom doorway:

The master suite:

View from the balcony of the master suite:

The master bath:

In between the master bedroom and another bedroom was this little area that included storage cupboards, a mini fridge, and a stairway that led up to an office loft:

Stairs to the office loft:

Some of the storage in this area:

The other bedroom adjacent to the master:

Looking up at the office loft from that bedroom:

Mini fridge and storage in the small area between the bedrooms:

The office loft:

Looking down into the bedroom from the office loft:

The kitchen:

Bathroom in the apartment:

Kitchen area of the apartment:

Upstairs bedroom in the apartment:

Even the apartment has a little "nook"!:

Downstairs bedroom in the apartment:

Entry area of the apartment:

Another view of the loft in the bunk room. There was a door from the upstairs level of the apartment that led into the bunk room. I took this photo from there:

Another kitchen shot and the pantry next to the kitchen:

The backyard, which included a fireplace area, play equipment, a gazebo, a play house, a sand box, and a tennis court:

Adrian enjoying the swingset!:

Great views of the mountains from the backyard:

This area led to the indoor pool in the basement:

More mountain views:

So there you have it! The house! Now on to all the fun things we did. On Monday we made decorations for our Mexican themed dinner / activity that we were having that evening. There was also a lot of game playing / visiting, and some people were already trying out the pool, game room, and racquetball court. I have a lot of random photos here and I'm not going to try to be too organized about them. All of these photos were taken Monday afternoon: 

The theme of the reunion was "Remember Me", taken from the movie Coco, which is what inspired our Mexican theme dinner. Daniel also built an "ofrenda" where we displayed pictures of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents:

The Mexican dinner was mostly catered; we had delicious tamales, beans, and rice, as well as a variety of taco meats (the tacos were made by Taran). We even had a Mexican drink (can't remember what it was called) and "pan de muerto" for dessert. Yum!

After dinner, we gathered for a program to remember our ancestors. Each of my siblings and I had chosen on of our great grandparents (convenient--there are 8 of them and there are 8 of us!) to research and we shared some of the interesting facts and stories about each one of them.

At the end, many of the grandchildren sang the song "Remember Me" from the movie Coco. I don't have any photos of that because I did a movie of it instead but of course the movie is too long to attach here.

Then there was more game playing, swimming, and visiting:

On Tuesday morning we had breakfast and a lot of people watched the movie Coco:

The rest of the day there was more visiting, game playing, swimming, and so forth. We also tied a quilt and worked on making some stuffed bears for a humanitarian project. 

Leftover cookies from lunch. Guess what kind of cookie most of us don't like?!:

These two cuties were pretending that they were putting on sunscreen!:

For dinner we had a catered dutch oven meal, in honor of Pioneer Day (it was the 24th) which included ribs, chicken, cheesy potatoes, green beans, and scones. There was also fruit salad, home made root beer, and peach cobbler and a chocolate dessert (with ice cream of course):

After dinner Frank took a family photo using his drone. Then he let others try out the drone; I thought this shot of a bunch of the guys mesmerized by the drone was pretty funny:

I was on the dinner committee, so I helped the catering guy pack up his stuff and got a shot of his trailer:

Julia had prepared a number of pioneer games to play after dinner:

The egg relay races were a hit!:

Even the big kids enjoyed the play equipment:

After it got dark, there was a lot more visiting, plus a grandkids sing along in the racquetball court:

   Some of the cool "Pew Pew Pew" tshirts we got for the reunion:

Harvey is so cute!:

We each put our name on a cup so we wouldn't go through so many cups. This isn't all of them!:

In the morning we had breakfast and everyone packed up. We still had time for a few games.

They asked us to remove our sheets and pillowcases from the beds and to put them and the towels in the two laundry rooms. Nearly 60 people can go through a lot of sheets and towels in a couple of days!:

It was really, really great to spend those couple of days together, all under the same roof. I kind of wondered if it was going to be hard for all of us because when we planned this reunion last year we didn't know that Dad wouldn't be with us anymore. It turned out to be okay. We all missed him, of course, but it was like he was there in spirit, and I know he was very aware of us and what we were doing and was there to share the experience with us.

On the way back to American Fork / Lehi area, we stopped to have lunch with some of Erick's family at a place in Provo called Ripples Drive In, which is sort of famous because it was featured in a classic BYU short film called The Phone Call. They had really yummy burgers and milkshakes:

Oh, and fry sauce!! One of the things I love about Utah!

After getting back to Amy's house and unpacking, I took a short nap. That evening we went with Tim & Rachelle, Amy & Nate, Ben & Dee, Taran & Lisa, Emily, and Madalyn to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple to do sealings. We were doing some family file names for Rachelle's family and it was very sweet. I loved being in the temple again!! I miss going to the temple so much. When we got out to our car, we found this on our front windshield:

Only in Utah!!

On Thursday we got caught up on laundry and I went to lunch with my friend Paula. Frank went to a movie with Nate. In the afternoon, Amy, Jared and I went to visit Dad's grave. The new headstone that was just installed a few days earlier looks great!:

That evening a lot of the family gathered at a park near Amy's house to play ultimate frisbee:

Afterwards everyone ended up at Mom's house to eat ice cream (there was a lot left over from the reunion because we didn't realize the dutch oven guy was providing ice cream with the cobbler, so we bought 4 large containers of vanilla ice cream). Frank and I missed most of the ultimate frisbee game because we went to Tanner's apartment to visit with him for a while (Darlee was there too) but we did go back to Mom's house for ice cream and more visiting.

On Friday all the girls met for a girl's brunch at a place called Waffle Love, which has super yummy waffles (go figure)--both savory and sweet. Mom and I both wanted to try one of each kind (sweet and savory) but didn't want to eat two whole waffles so I got a banana cream pie waffle and she got a chicken avocado waffle and we split them both in half and shared. I wish there were a place like that in Frederick, because they were delicious! We all enjoyed visiting while we ate, too.

That evening we went to a reunion for the extended Benjamin Franklin Johnson Family which was in Payson Utah. The first thing we did was go on a self-guided tour of sites in the Payson / Santaquin area that were connected with Benjamin Franklin Johnson. Most of them were just various stone monuments, but we did also visit the site where the his large family home used to be in Spring Lake (and it has been partially excavated) and we also visited a museum that had a lot of cool artifacts. I could have spent a lot more time at the museum if there had been time.

Part of the foundation for the house:

This organ was brought across the plains by the Holman family (BFJ married three of the Holman sisters and one of them, Sarah Melissa Holman, is the wife that our family is descended from):

I loved these community calendars with pictures of the town's "royalty" on each one. The one in the middle is the 1968 calendar:

Couldn't believe how tiny the waist on this dress is! That's what happens when you smash your body into a corset. Personally, I would rather have a wide waist!:

This little spinning wheel was also brought across the plains by the Holman family:

After getting some dinner at a Subway, we headed back to Payson Park for the actual family reunion where there was a short program, displays of artifacts, and memorabilia to purchase. I picked up copies of My Life's Review for me and each of my kids, which I ordered and paid for back in January. I also got a reunion tshirt. Seth got one too. Shellie, Amy, Curtis & Julia were also there. Aunt Diane had asked us if we could help sing a song (BFJ wrote the words) so we did that. Frank, Jared, Seth, Amy and I also participated in a part of the program where they had people come up to represent each of the children of BFJ--he had 45 in all!

Seth held the flag for the pledge of allegiance:

Here is the card for the daughter of BFJ that I represented. I was randomly handed a card and when I looked at it, I thought it was pretty cool that I got someone who has the same birthday as me!:

I really enjoyed looking at all of the artifacts that they had displayed at the reunion:

This is bark and walnuts from a tree BFJ planted (plus a photo of the tree, which was cut down a few years ago):

The rest of these displays include artifacts that were found when the BFJ homesite was being excavated. I thought it was cool to see all of these things.

The mountains looked cool on the way home. I tried to get a picture but it didn't really capture how cool it looked:

And that was our crazy, busy, wonderful week!