Well on Wednesday our family left for Idaho to go to our Nilsen family reunion. It was pretty much amazing. I love my aunts, uncles, and cousins soooo much! It was great to see them all again especially my oldest cousin Gary who recently got back from Paraguay after two years of faithful service to the church.
THURSDAY, JULY 3RD - We got there at about 11:30 on Thursday night. Everyone was still up waiting for us. The theme of our reunion was the "Holiday Inn" and about twice, sometimes three times a day we would celebrate a different holiday. A whistle would blow and we would all meet up in the family room. We'd read a scripture and try to guess the holiday from the scripture and then we'd the the haka (sp?). For those of you who don't know what the haka is, go watch the pregame of a BYU football game. It's some cool polynesian war dance that's pretty LEGIT. You can probably guess the first holiday we celebrated: New Year's!!! We did toasts and sipped on our martinelli's. Halfway through my second glass I started laughing about something that I don't remember and unfortuantely well, let's just say that my nose was cleaned out with the martinelli's. We stayed up til' like 2:30 in the morning and finally decided to go to bed.
FRIDAY, JULY 4TH - Next morning we all woke up surprisingly on time for how late we had stayed up the night before. Our Uncle Tom woke us up by playing the audio clip of John Beck beating those darn Utes on the last play of the game 2 years ago, lovely, I know. We gathered for our next holiday. It turns out it wasn't exactly a holiday, but instead an event that happens around a holiday. It was the Holiday Bowl itself!!! We walked down to Oakley High School, home of the Hornets, and enjoyed a little game of flag football. Our team pretty much dominated and we took home the victory. The game's final play highlighted the whole game with my cousin, Brad, making an interception then having his pants accidently pulled down and getting the touchdown still while everyone had a clear view of his rear end. Hahaha, touchdown though right? We all walked back together and enjoyed a fantastic brunch. After we short of just chilled for a few hours before heading over the the city pool. There was a diving board and basketball hoop there and we all had a lot of fun. A bunch of the guys got together and played a friendly game of tip-in. It was lots of fun until Josh got elbowed accidently in his just healed broken nose and we had to stop. Shortly after our whole family started to races in the shallow end of the pool running back and forth, going backwards, crawling, etc. It was awesome! Half the family went home then and a few stuck around. Me, Brad, Josh, Andrew, and Lindsay were actually the only ones that stayed. We just chilled in the shallow end and we kept bugging Lindsay by poking here with our feet because she has a phobia of feet, kinda weird, I know. Jk, Lindsay, I still love ya. We eventually headed home after a few more minutes. I rode with Josh and he took us on a mini tour of Oakley, Idaho so we could both see what it was like living in the small town. We drove past the rodeo grounds the few house, and past the only gas station. It was cool, but we quickly got bored and headed back home. We chilled for a little bit again until it was time for dinner. After dinner we gathered around for our next holiday. We read the scripture and figured out it was birthdays!!! We sung happy birthday to ourselves and then we all got t-shirts that we were supposed to wear in the family picture the next day. We all enjoyed playing the game of signs for an hour or two until it was time for fireworks. Fireworks were pretty awesome, I do have to admit though, I'm not a big fan of them. I stood pretty far away and just watched on. After fireworks were finished our cousins that live in Oakley invited us to play a game called "fugitive". By this time it was 11 and was real dark so I was interested in the game and agreed to play. Let me explain fugitive. You get a bunch of people together and everyone starts and the same place trying to get to a certain destination. Sounds pretty simple right? Well here's the twist: other people are driving cars around looking for you and if they catch you, you lose. You have to hide in bushes, hay, behind fences, etc. So we walk down to the high school parking lot and meet up with some Oakley natives and head out to the rodeo grounds for the start. The drivers say go, and give us 30 seconds. I was staying with Gary and Josh for the first part, so we booked it out of the rodeo grounds and shortly after discovered that a car was coming already. We hopped a fence and hid in a pasture next to the horses little area. I quickly discovered that I was allergic to the hay because I started to sneeze and get a runny nose. I stayed quiet though and the first car we saw past. We got up and continued on. We found Andrew and Chris and we started walking with them. Well Gary and Josh decided to run and I was too tired to, so I walked and now stayed with Andrew and Chris. We started walking on this dark road and were surprised to find Brad and Emma. So now we had our group and we walked. Andrew lives in Oakley and knew exactly where to take us. He told us we'd walk on this dark road for a little bit until it ended and we just crossed this field and we'd be to the destination. So as we were walking a car turned onto the road we were on. We all dove quickly into the hay next to us and discovered that it was wet. It didn't matter though, cause we couldn't get caught. The car passed and we kept going. We got to the field and started walking a realized that the sprinklers had been on in this field and it was soaked. We trudged on though and got out of the field by climbing a barbed wire fence. We had to hide in some more hay for about 8 mins or so while a car was right next to us, but then eventually passed. We got to our destination and were so happy. I hurried on home and took some medicine and showered.
SATURDAY, JULY 5TH - Well in the morning I was feeling loads better and wasn't feeling sick at all. We hurried upstairs when we heard the whistle and figured out our next holiday was St. Patty's Day. We enjoyed our green eggs, our green hash browns, and green milk. We all then hopped in cars and headed over to the park for a good ol' kickball game. Unfortunately my team lost this time, it was still lots of fun though. We went home and got ready to go take our family pictures. Pictures were good, and we are a darn good lookin family! We got back to the house and went straight to the family room for our next holiday. It was Cinco de Mayo!!! We enjoyed our tacos for lunch and ate quickly. We left right after lunch for Burley (half hour away) to the movie theatre. We had 4 choices of movies; Get Smart, Hancock, Kun Fu Panda, or Wall-E. I elected to see Get Smart again and let me tell you, it was just as funny the second time. We then went home and started watching Transformers. We had to stop it about halfway while we ate dinner, but then continued it shortly after. I'd never seen it before, and it was an awesome movie. David had made a quiz for us to take after watching the movie and my group only missed two questions out of twelve. We then gathered around for our Christmas celebration. We all had brought white elephant gifts and I ended up with some old CD's, but traded after the deal and got some candy and a woopy cushion. At midnight we sung happy birthday (for real this time) to Nate, because it was his b-day. Then, we were all pooped and went to bed.
SUNDAY, JULY 6TH - I guess the staying up late finally hit us and all the guys slept til about 10, 10:15ish. Good thing church started at 11 though. We got up and left for church. Church was good. My little cousin Nate (who's b-day it was) found his "true love" in his primary class and since it was fast and testimony meeting the girl got up and bore her testimony. Me and Brad were just joking him and told him to go bear his, and we both offered a dollar if he did it. As the meeting was about to close, Nate got up and walked up all the way from the back and bore his testimony! It was crazyness!!! He's such a little stud. After church he was trying to get the girl's email address, but was unsuccessful because he was a little nervous to talk to her. Totally understood though for only being 10. We went home and celebrated our last holdiay, Thanksgiving!!! The food was great and it filled me up real good. For dessert we had cake and mexican soda. The mexican soda was good, made you kinda sick of it though after too much though. We all gathered around and threw out ideas for next family reunion, which my family is hosting. We had some good ideas and I can't wait for the next reunion. We then all said our goodbyes and we were off. We drove 9 hours all the way to Vegas and stayed the night there then came home today.
A huge gracias to Uncle Tom and Aunt Jill for hosting this awesome reunion!!! You planned it out awesome!!!
