Price Family Reunion 2015

This year we decided that Zion National Park would be a great place for a family reunion, with it's awe inspiring landscape.

Katie, Joshua, Aunt Delma, Kyle, Mike and Derek.  And that is Daniel in the back who is Susan's grandson.  

Mike, Evan and I decided to spend a few days first in Las Vegas to visit Aunt Delma.  She is such a delightful lady to visit.  She loves to feel needed and serve others.  She made us an awesome breakfast of pancakes, sausage and bacon.


 Then we went for a drive to Red Canyon State Park.

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It was so nice to get away from the busyness of the Las Vegas and see some beautiful country.

We spent the weekend in St. George, and stayed in the newly renovated Temple apartments right across the street from the St. George Temple.   The apartments were awesome and it was so fun to wake up in the morning, look out the window and see the Temple.

Can you see the moon?  

I Love To See The Temple, especially at night.  

 Rachel and Joey came for the weekend too, and we got to spend some time with their little foster daughters.

Joey is in there somewhere.

I love her sweet smile!!

Monday after lunch we headed out to Zion National Ponderosa Ranch, were we would stay for the next four nights in one large vacation home with all 27 of our family members.  That is six children, five in-laws, 14 grandchildren!!  The adults were going to outnumbered.


The drive over offered beautiful vistas!!

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Evan enjoying Checkerboard Mesa.  

I am amazed how big our family has grown in such a short amount of time.

The Whole Wild Bunch!!
Back - NW, Matteo, Amy, John, Katie, Derek, Brad
Middle-Joey, Rachel, Joshua, April, Mike, Cindy, Corbin, Daniel, David, Sariah, Joanna
Front- Evan, NT, Aiden, Callan, Thomas, Kyle, Andrew, Leah, Spencer

Our picture kept getting photo bombed.  Those pesky kids!!!

Siblings!!

David's Family
Andrew, Daniel, Leah, David, Joanna, Sariah, and Spencer

April's Family
Matteo and April
Corbin and Thomas

John's Family
John and Amy
Callan and Aiden

Katie's Family
Katie, Brad, Derek
Kyle and Joshua

Rachel's Family
Rachel and Joey
with their foster girls

This was best with all the grandkids.  It's near impossible to get a good picture!!

The home we stayed in was a lot of fun.  It was big and had fun play equipment outside.  Check out this airplane.

Grandma and Andrew

Brad brought a homemade giant jinga set that was a lot of fun for big and little people.

Joanna sneaking off with some blocks. 

The deck had some great views.  

Little Daniel liked the space under this table to hide. 

Thomas and Joshua

The weather was great to eat outdoors. 

 Every day we enjoyed seeing the beauties of Zion.

I especially loved all the flowers that bloom even in the heat of the summer.

This little robin tried to beg for some food, but he seemed pretty fat already.

 One of the highlights of the reunion was a family talent show.  However, there was some sneakiness going on the evening before.




Here was the finished project!  It was pretty funny and the kids loved the surprise of Olaf and bubbles and silly string!!




Kyle told some knock-knock jokes.  He obviously doesn't understand knock-knock jokes yet, but he had a lot of fun!





Spencer has disappearing thumbs.





 Joshua sings a great version of "Wheels on the Bus".

 Evan, Mike and I did a parody of "Home, Home on the Range", we called in "Home, Home on the Hill", because we live on a hill.  It was a big hit too.





Here are the words.  We spent about three hours one night, just laughing and have fun coming up with the verses.  Evan's music teacher, Victoria, put together music so Evan could accompany us on the Q-Chord.  It was great to see his big smile through the whole song! 

Oh, give me a house, with a kind, loving spouse.  

Where children and grandchildren play

Everyone dreams, of a bowl of ice cream.

And, Grandpa’s hair will never go grey. 

(Chorus) Home, home on the hill,

Where children and grandchildren play

Everyone dreams, of a bowl of ice cream.

And, Grandpa’s hair will never go grey.  

Oh, tell me a pun, we will have lots of fun. 

We will trick Daddy every single day. 

Now and hereafter, the house fills with laughter

And, Grandpa’s hair will never go grey.

Home, home on the hill,

Where children and grandchildren play

Everyone dreams, of a bowl of ice cream.

And, Grandpa’s hair will never go grey.  

Grandma sings us a song, we will all sing along. 

We will help with the chores every day. 

Try to be lazy, you’ll drive poor mom crazy. 

And then all of her hair will be gray. 

Home, home on the hill,

Where children and grandchildren play

Everyone dreams, of a bowl of ice cream.

And, Grandpa’s hair will never go grey.

Oh, give me a place, with heavenly grace

And the Sabbath day we will observe. 

We’ll pray with much love, to our Father above

Our neighbors and loved ones we’ll serve.

Home, home on the hill,

Where children and grandchildren play

Everyone dreams, of a bowl of ice cream.

And, Grandpa’s hair will never go grey.

We had a Wild, Wild West day.  The kids had fun with stick horses, and dressing up western!

Joanna loved her horsey. 

These girls may look sweet, but, they pretended to be sheriffs and arrested people! 

Sheriff Leah!

Kyle enjoyed his horse too!!

Even some big people got in the fun!!

Of course Rachel had a purple outfit. 

Yummy food.  The girls loved the little picnic table. 

Evan was a trooper!

Taking a break along the River Trail. 

Spencer is taller than me, and he built a tower taller than himself. 

Callan was happy laying in the warm sand.  

Yummy food

The older kids had fun playing Fooz Ball in the garage. 

Peek-A-Boo little Elf

Daniel loves Cheetos

Thomas was the first one to loose a tooth at our reunion.  We had two visits from the tooth fairy!!

Sometimes getting dressed was a challenge.  Little Daniel learned the hard way, two legs don't go in the same pant leg.  




Kyle had fun horseback riding, I loved his YeeHaw!! 


Kyle also enjoyed trampoline bunging jumping. 

Leah horseback riding

Joanna Horseback riding.

The sunrise from our deck on our last morning. 

More beautiful rocks to see on the way home. 

We certainly enjoyed being with our family and spending time in Heavenly Father's creations.  We felt really blessed that everyone arrived safely there and back home.  Our trip home, however, was not without incident.  Somewhere in the middle of the hot desert between Las Vegas and Baker we heard a noise and thought we had run over something.  A little while later, the tire pressure warning light lit up.  We stopped and one tire looked a little low.  We decide to continue on, and heard another noise and it felt like we had a flat tire.  We stopped again, the tire was still low, but not flat.  We continued on to Baker to put more air in the tire and have it checked out.  We were shocked to find out that a big chunk had come off our tire.  Steel and thread was exposed.  This could have easily been a tire that blew and we could have been in a very serious accident.  We were able to get a new tire and continue on our way.  So, grateful for Heavenly Father's watchful care over our family.  

A big chunk out of our tire. 

We felt like our family reunion was a success.  It was fun to watch the cousins interact with each other.  And, to see our children happy to spend time together again.  We are all spread out over the West know, so it's hard to get together.  We look forward to another reunion in two years.  

A Golden Birthday

I wish I would have know about Golden Birthdays a long time ago!  It is when your birthday date matches your age.  Evan just turned 27 on August 27th!  We decided it was time to party!!

One of the first things that Evan decided to do was to try to get 27 people to donate 27 dollars to The Make-A-Wish Foundation.  We set up a fundraising page here.  It explains about Evan's wish and why Make-A-Wish is important to our family. Every little bit helps!

What better thing to get for you birthday than a POT of GOLD, especially if it's chocolate!

Weird Al is kind of Golden too!!

Oh, and here is another book in his favorite series, Orgami Yoda! 

We were so happy with Evan's cake, it came out great!!

http://youtu.be/dM7NolRgH7M

http://youtu.be/EYV7CRHZ99w

Cowabunga Dude!!

Surf's Up!!

Saturday we became members of the Project Surf Camp family! 

I had heard about this camp from my friend Gretchen a few years ago, but never got Evan involved.  I guess I just thought it wasn’t really for Evan.  This year, I decided to call and tell them a little bit about Evan and see if it was possible for him for participate.  I explained that he could not stand and was told that was not a problem they would love to have him come out and surf!  So, I signed him up.  What was I thinking?!?  

Other family members are invited to participate and April agree to give surfing a try too!!  It made me feel better to know she was there also!  What an awesome, sister!!  

On camp day we drove up and got him signed in.  We were meet by some of the most enthusiastic positive people you could ever possibly meet!  

You need to know that Evan has lived a mile from the ocean all his life.  Surfing is kind of a way of life here!  Evan’s peers at church surfed!  A lot!  I was all of a sudden flooded with memories.  Memories of Evan being on the sidelines.  Actually, one particular event where Evan was, well, I guess you could say uninvited to his young men’s (church youth group) activity.  They were going to the beach to surf!  I just wanted Evan to be able to watch.  But, everyone wanted to be in the water and no one wanted to sit with him on the beach they all wanted to be in the water surfing.  Talk about being excluded.  

So, when Katy, Project Surf Camp director, said, “Evan WILL surf today!”  I was hit with unexpected tears.  I shared with her the experience of being left behind, and she said, “You are a part of our family now!”.  Wow! Really, a family!  Katy said, don’t worry, we cry every day here!  We are here to support you!  Really!!  

Evan was lovingly fitted with a wetsuit!  Try putting on a wetsuit in a wheelchair!  It didn’t phase these people at all!  In no time at all they had that wetsuit on him and he was ready to go.  

The plan was for Evan to sit on the surf board and someone would hold him from behind.  That was Hannah, a high school student.  (Young people sometimes get a bad rap these these days, but I want you know there was a whole slew of awesome young people volunteering their time to help people with special needs that day.)  There was also someone behind the surf board and two spotters on the side making sure the surf board stayed straight and to grab Evan in case he fell off.  April got to be one of his spotters.  By the way, Evan NEVER fell off!   

Emotions flowed watching Evan catch that first wave.  He had a great big smile on his face!  I can’t tell you how many waves he caught!  He had a blast!  And we were thrilled.  

Project Surf Camp’s motto is “changing lives”.  Thank you for changing ours.  

Surfers and Instructors in front of the famous and beautiful Morro Rock! 

Getting ready to have some fun!

Instructions and Stretching 

Look at that big smile!  Evan was completely trusting of people he barely meet! 

I was getting a little worried how far they went out, but it didn't phase Evan at all.  

Catching more waves. 

Just taking a break to warm up a bit!  That's Hannah and Caleb, I can't say enough about how awesome they were!!

  

Smiles are something you see a lot at this camp! 

Of course you can't be at the beach and not build a sand castle!  

Look Ma no hands!! 

April even got a go on the board with Evan!! 

And she got to catch some waves!

More big smiles!!  

Check out Project Surf Camp's Facebook page here.   Make sure to "like" them!!

Valentine's Day 2014

Today my sweetie and I  took a lovely drive up the coast. We stopped along the way at different sights.   Not to brag or anything, but we live in paradise just in case you didn't already know it.

The water at San Simeon Bay was such a beautiful color and so peaceful and calm.


We saw creatures big and small. 

We decided to walk along the beach south of the pier at San Simeon.  These elephant seals looked like rocks from far away.  As we got closer we realized what we were seeing.  They are humongous!!  They were actually several miles from the thousands of sea elephant rookery just below Piedres Blancas Lighthouse. 

What a life the elephant seals have just hanging on the beach all day!  They yell at each other and throw sand around.

I was so excited to see this little guy.  I had not seen a banana slug in quite a while.  They are kind of gross but cute at the same time.  What do you think?

This egret was just hanging out watching the sleepy waves.

The ocean was a beautiful deep blue color.  There are sea otters and sea elephants swimming out there. 

The fog was coming in and out all day making the sun play peek-a-boo!

 We hiked out to the shoreline at Harmony Headlands State Park.  I do believe there is a just a tinge of green on the hillside.  It is interesting to see such brown hills in February next to an ocean full of water.  

We ended the day at Morro Bay for a yummy dinner at the Great American Fish Company.  The sun was beautifully setting below the fog at Morro Rock.  What a great Valentine's Day with my best friend and forever companion!  Thank you, Mike. 

Viola

For the past thirty-five plus years every Christmas this advent calendar has been hung with loving care in my dining room.   Yesterday I turned over an angel.  Yesterday, my sweet mother-in-law, Viola, left this earth and as one of my nephews said, she "grew her angel wings. She is going to be the sweetest yet feistiest angel there ever will be".   Strange that we would have an angel to turn over on the advent calendar on the morning of her passing.