My whole life I've always looked forward to my Dad's family reunion with all of my fun cousins. As we've grown and expanded, we've started to hold this reunion every other summer. This summer, the reunion was held in Monterey, CA. Unfortunately, Kory's family reunion was at the exact same time, so I opted to go with my parents since this was likely the only time it would be held in California. All of my siblings decided to make this their summer vacation, so we were all criss-crossing the West on various road trips and had a good time keeping up with each other on group texts.
Mom, Dad and I walked along the bay down to Cannery Row and ate some delicious clam chowder at the Fish Hopper.
Mom, Dad, and I left on Wednesday morning and tooks turns driving through Idaho and Nevada. A couple of big long stops for accidents.
These signs let us know what was going on. In one case, there was a completely burned up semi with fire crews putting out the truck and the grass around it. Yes, it was hot. We stopped for lunch in Wells and stayed the night in Fernley, NV. I did crack up a little when I saw how big the font was on my Mom's Kindle app. This is her i-pad. She said she has to do that so she doesn't get carsick.
Thursday morning we headed for Reno, Lake Tahoe, Sacramento and then south to Monterey. We got to the hotel about the same time as the rest of the family, so it was fun to unpack and unload and descend upon that poor hotel--just imagine 32 kids running up and down the halls.
After we got settled in we headed for the Del Monte Beach. It was so fun to play in the waves and visit. Most of the family managed to meet up there for an hour or so. Then, everyone headed off in different directions for dinner.
Mom, Dad and I walked along the bay down to Cannery Row and ate some delicious clam chowder at the Fish Hopper.
That night, all of the kids wanted to swim, so we hung out in the pool/hottub. Since the pool wasn't heated, it turned into "how many people can fit in the hot tub."
I shared a room with Gracie, Addie, and Hannah. They were great little roomies. Addie makes me laugh. She was just kicking back, chatting with me. Jodi said, "She'll just keep talking if you don't tell her to stop" and Hannah, goes, "Yeah, Miss Talksalot!"
Friday we spent most of the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was fun.
Mom, Dad and I stopped at Ghirardelli's for a treat. Then we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We rented a banquet room at the hotel and had a short talent show. There were some numbers from Heather's family, Melinda and Elisa did a dramatic reading (ha ha) and played a duet. Laurel's granddaughter sang her ABCs and we had Nikki play the theme to Jaws while Ally did an interpretive dance as a shark, we all sang "In a Coming Day," and mom played some songs on the piano. At the end we all sang a couple of songs and had a short family meeting. I'm so lucky to have such a great family. There were 71 of us there.
That night we all hung out at the pool visiting again.
Saturday morning we packed up and checked out and then went to a local park for some breakfast, provided by Heather's family. We visited a little more and then everyone went their different ways.
Kristi's family ended up staying at the same hotel as Mom, Dad, and I on Saturday night in Winnemucca. We got up the next morning and went to sacrament meeting.
After that, we headed for home. I was super happy to see my family again, but it was a fun getaway.
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