Family Reunion. Call it DONE.

As of yesterday, we are now once again just a teeny family of 7.  

It seems teeny since last week we were a family of 47.

My husband has 6 sisters and 1 brother and from those 8 kids there are 31 grandchildren 

and 3 great grandchildren.

After everyone left, Lyle asked me if I thought we'd gone over-the-top in our preparations.

We thought about it and decided that if you have an over-the-top sized family, 

then over-the-top preparations are just necessary.

If we had it to do over again, I don't think we would do anything differently.

We bought a 20X40 dining tent off of Craigslist and had plenty of room for us all to be together. 

We had cousins and aunts and uncles in every bedroom and couch on our property and a little tent city was erected behind our garage.

There were 2 port-a-potties and an outdoor shower and as far as I know, Google Earth did NOT update our satellite image while Auntie Jules was using said shower, much to her relief.

The weather could not have been more perfect the whole week.  

We had an activity each day.  Here the girls were at the bunkers at Fort Worden for beach day.

Our family tends to be heavy on the granddaughters, 

who seem to be more likely than the boys to take advantage of photo ops, 

hence their predominance in pictures.

On hiking day, the early-morning hikers were rewarded with great views.

Lyle took the early die-hard group for a grueling hike, and I led the later group, actually missed the trail head and drove straight to the viewpoint.

I got no complaints and we all enjoyed the M&M-heavy trail mix.

The others were sore the next day, but we felt just fine.

The only negative of the family reunion was whale watching day.

I think this photo must have been taken at the very beginning.

As was this one.

Because not long afterward, many of these lovely young ladies were puking over the side of the ship.

The water was so choppy that my sister-in-law actually fell over in her chair, gashing her head.

She was met at Friday Harbor by an ambulance which took her to get stitches, not exactly the souvenir  she wanted from San Juan Island.

As she was attended to, some of the group had recovered enough to eat lunch, 

but others needed more time.

At least it was a beautiful day.

And after all was said and done, not a single orca was spotted.

Back at home, there was nightly pickle ball.

Do you see how terrifying my brother-in-law looks?  

I should know.  I was on the other side of the net.

And on another night, horses arrived to give the kids rides up and down our street.

Our new waterfall came in very handy for the Adopt-a-Duck derby.   We had several heats and the competition was fierce.

The whole thing was truly fantastic.

Franklin adored every minute of it and is now bored out of his mind.

See you all in 2015 in Idaho and 2017 in South Dakota!