Hello, George Family! (Day 3 of our Trip)

Saturday, July 5th, 2014, was the George Family Reunion.  This family reunion went back to my great grandparents, Olaf and Blanche George.  My Great Grandparents had 6 children, all of which are still alive, 5 of them were able to make it.  I was sad that my own grandfather, Ray, and my grandmother, Sharon, couldn't come, but it was nice to see everyone else.  The reunion was in Kanosh, Utah, the town that my great grandparents lived their whole married life and raised their children.  My Aunt Helen was in charge of the reunion this year and she did a great job putting together a fun time.

Lori, my cousin, took everyone on a historical tour of the town.  The kids loved it (Oliver went twice).

Fran (another cousin) set up water games.

Oliver made it a little hard for this team to win.  He kept refilling their front bucket.

We also played water duck duck goose, water kick ball, and a huge water fight.  You can't tell, but I'm taking these pictures soaked, thanks to my loving children.

See what I mean!?!

When the water from the buckets was gone, the kids improvised with the water fountain.

And then it rained... providing even more water.  As you can tell, we had a great time.

The reason it took so long for me to post this event is because I was waiting to get this picture.  This is a picture of my Aunts and Uncles...  As I mentioned before, I missed my own Grandparents.  Had they been able to come, they would have been in this picture as well.

From my family, only a small number of people were able to come.  My Uncle Mark and Aunt Jolene came with their two girls and my Uncle Fred and Aunt Tammy was able to bring their 4 children.  But even with that small group, we had fun visiting and representing the Ray George group.  It was a great reunion.  We all had such a great time.

My favorite bits are in pictures.  I got to watch my kids play with new cousins. I enjoyed catching up with "long lost" cousins, specifically my cousin, Jolynn, who I haven't really talked with in about 15 years.  She has two cute boys that Oliver enjoyed playing with.

Thank you, Aunt Helen, for putting together a great reunion.

Week of Fish

Last week was FISH WEEK at the Smithson house.  I have decided to divide the summer up into subjects. We started the summer with fish because the kids would be taking swim lessons and spending a lot of time in the water.  I thought that we could learn about other water creatures.  We started with the trip to the fish hatchery and fishing as I already mentioned.  Here is a picture of Melanie trying to get a run away fish (He jumped right out of the bucket... silly guy!)  

 Swim lessons started on Tuesday.  The kids got a good start on swimming this summer.  I'm really excited about how well they have done already.  Last year, their lessons didn't start until the summer was almost over.

 We read a lot of books about sea creatures.  Oliver wanted to get books on Clown Fish.  Noelle wanted to read about Sea Horses.  We also got books with whales and jelly fish.  We have learned a lot of fun facts this week.  We have also done some projects.  On one afternoon, we painted with forks.

 Another day, we played with bubbles... because, why not?

 Thanks to some coupons we had, we took a field trip to the Sea Life - Arizona.  It was fun to see some of the animals up close after learning so many things about them.

 They even got to touch some!

 Sea Turtles and Sharks!

 Sea horses are really cool.  Fun fact, they don't use their tail to swim... they just it to hold onto things!

 Later, we used our fork paint pictures to cut out sea animals and make our own aquariums.

 Noelle's Aquarium.

 Melanie's Aquarium.  (Oliver made one too, but it's not pictured)

 Melanie even wrote a book about Clown Fish (a non-fiction book).  She did a great job with the facts and the illustrations.  I love it!

It has been a fun week of fish!

Water Day

It's the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL for Noelle!  To finish up a wonderful year of preschool, her class (along with their siblings) had a water day!  They had a lot of fun splashing!  Here are some of the pictures I got today.

 Towards the end of the "party", they had a water balloon fight and then Popsicles.

 As you can tell by the following picture, someone popped a balloon on Oliver's head... but he didn't care.  He had a popsicle to keep him happy!

It was a lot of fun!  I'm so glad I was able to enjoy it with them.

The Super Smithsons!

It has become an annual tradition... The Ka-POW Superhero Adventure Run.  The first year, Melanie and I ran together and Melanie was dressed up as super girl.  In fact, that year, so was Noelle.  Brandon was Captain America and I had a Superman shirt on (Oliver was wearing red, white, and blue, but was just little).  The next year, we were super, but Melanie was Super Melanie, Noelle was Super Noelle, and so on.  This year we were a super team.  The Super Smithsons.  For fun, we made matching shirts.  We decided to try this tie dye spray and made an activity out of it.

 I made a stencil of an "S" so we could add that to the front.

 On race day, it was the girls that participated in the event while the boys cheered us on.  Here we are pre-race.  This was Noelle's first race, ever!

 Here I am with my ultimate super hero husband.  I love him!

 This year, we talked some of our favorite people to join us!  Liz signed her daughter, Morgan, up.  Then, during packet pickup, was informed that she would need to participate too.  At 38 weeks pregnant, it was definitely proof of her super mom powers!  Ethan had super powers of his own... he sneaked into the race and had fun with us!

 And we are off!

 The event had several obstacles to prove our super-ness.  We had to go through a room that looked like it was rotating (we all agreed that was the worst), through some bounce houses, down a water slide, through "dangerous" foaming bubbles, over and under, and pretty much everything you could think of.  It was 2 miles of crazy adventure... and we loved it!  All to protect Gilbert from danger, of course.

  The very last obstacle was a water slide in the form of a bounce house.  It really sent me flying...  then I hit the mats, feet first.  My feet stopped instantly (rubbing on the rubber), my top half did not.  This super girl crashed!  Thankfully, I barely missed taking Noelle out.

 We got WET!

 Running through the finish together!

 It's the Super Smithsons to the rescue!