Morwood Reunion

The Morwood reunion was held over the Pioneer Day weekend this year. We camped at UM Creek on Fish Lake Mountain. It was so nice to get out of town and just enjoy our family and this beautiful mountain.

I truly believe this is what heaven will look like.

We left St. George on Friday afternoon (7/22) and finally arrived at our camp site at about 8:30 pm. We had just enough time to get parked and set up before it got dark.

Saturday (7/23) many of our family members went on a long four-wheeler ride up and over the mountain. Russell and Emily went on the ride while I stayed back at camp with Colby and visited with my mom, aunts, and cousins. They started at our camp along UM Creek and went over the mountain to Gates Lake. Then Russell and my cousin, Dayne, came back to camp to help start dinner while the others continued on over the next mountain to the Gooseberry side of Fish Lake and then back another way to camp.

Along the trail they encountered rivers, mud holes, dust, dust and more dust. Russell did say that there were some beautiful meadows full of purple wildflowers and some amazing overlooks and scenery. As you can see from the picture, it was a pretty adventurous ride that totally wiped out Tyrel and Emily. It was also an eventful ride in that my cousin, Tobey's four-wheeler ran out of gas and had to be towed back, Klint Hughes four-wheeler caught on fire, or blew up, or had some kind of engine trouble (I never did get the whole story but it still runs so I don't know what happened.), and my other cousin, Dayne, rolled his four-wheeler with his 4-year-old daughter on it. Luckily no one was hurt and all returned safely.

That night we had a big family dinner of Dutch Oven chicken and potatoes and salads. The chicken was really good; I need to get the recipe from my cousin, Brooke, someday...

Sunday (7/24) was Pioneer Day. To celebrate, we went to church at the Fish Lake Lodge. Elder Pace from the Presiding Bishopric was the main speaker. He talked of honoring our ancestors by living up to the standards they set for us. We were an hour late for church though because we got bad information from the Lodge. When I worked for the Fish Lake Lodge 6 years ago church was always at 10:00 and it always has been 10:00 but my cousin's husband, Larry, said that he talked to the people at the Lodge and they said that because it was a holiday weekend, church was going to be at 11:00. We believed them and arrived at church at 11:00 to find it half over. We were bummed but in a way it was good because I don't think Emily or Colby would have set through one more hour of church.

After church we wandered through the 100 year old Lodge reliving memories of when I worked there. That was a fun summer.

Here we are chilling on the old log furniture in the restaurant. After site seeing, we walked down the Lake Shore trail along the lake and found a perfect spot to have a picnic and cook our hot dogs.

We ate our hot dogs (Emily's favorite camping food) and chips before heading down to the lake to skip rocks. My record of skipping rocks in probably 4-5 skips. I think Russell's was even more. Emily just liked throwing rocks into the water and sneaking her feet and shoes in the water even though we told her not to.

We had a lot of fun at the Lodge. We headed back to camp around 3. When we got back to camp, I took Emily on a little four-wheeler ride up and down the road while Russell played with Colby. Then around 5 or 6 o'clock we started getting our food ready for the big Dutch Oven cook off!

We made homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles. While on his horse riding camp out, Russell learned how to make the noodles and soup from his fellow YM leader. Noodles are actually quite easy to make; all you need is eggs and flour! The soup was a hit and all of the kids voted us the winners of the cook off. The other dishes were really good too. Lacie made a creamy chicken pasta salad, Tami made yummy baked bean with kielbasa sausage, and my mom made a meatball soup.

That night we stayed up late talking and roasting marshmallows for S'Mores. We had leftover Peeps from Easter so we roasted them for our S'mores instead of regular mallows. Peeps are actually really good roasted, you should try it.

Monday (7/25) was spent riding horses.

Well Emily and the other cousins rode them anyway. Jessica's fiance, Danny, brought up 4 of his horses and let all of the kids ride them around the camp. They had a blast riding and most of them didn't want to get off. Luckily all of the horses were pretty mellow because they had a lot of kids running around them startling them.

After riding for a while, we packed up our stuff and got ready to head home. The reunion was really fun and we enjoyed being with our extended family. We didn't want to leave. My sisters are staying up to Fish Lake for the entire week and even until we go to Lagoon on August 4! I wish we could stay too but we needed to get home to go to work. Bummer...

Thanks for the good times and the memories!