The Farnsworth Family: Farnsworth Reunion

The Farnsworth clan got together June 13-15 for a fun reunion. We spent the weekend camping in Pine Valley. It was so beautiful and cool and fun. We all had a great time together and did a lot of fun and crazy activities.

The trip didn't begin as good as Russell had hoped. Thursday morning I went to work and Russell got the final things ready like getting ice, packing the water jugs and the pillows and hooking on to the trailer. When he was finished, he shut the trailer door and it wouldn't shut right so he shut it a little harder.When he did this, the whole bottom of the door fell off and then the sides and pretty much the door just fell apart after that! I don't want to mention the response I got from him when I got home and asked why the trailer door was on the ground tore apart. He just told me "Don't ask!!!" and I just went in the house and let him figure it out. After driving to every RV place in town to look for a new door, Russell found out every place required us to order a new door which would take 4-6 weeks and they all cost at least $300. Russell decided to head to Home Depot instead and buy some new boards and rebuild the door himself. Once again I stayed in the house with the kids as he worked and cursed the door for the next couple hours as he fixed the door. Finally the door was as good as new and back on the trailer and we were able to leave. Lets just say Russell was in a much better mood after the we were finally on the mountain! I told him it wouldn't be camping if something didn't go wrong or if we didn't have to fix something on the trailer! He agreed.

When we finally got to camp and got everything set up, we decided to go exploring. Colby wanted to try out his new "pishing pole" in the river. (Colby says p's instead of f's!) He had a great time fishing and was getting really good at casting his pole and then reeling it in as fast as he could. When I bought him his fishing pole, he was so excited and told me all about how he was going to catch a little pish with his pishing pole. Then he asked me if I would cook his pish so he could eat it. I told I would cook his fffffish. He said "Yeah my pish." I just laughed.

While we were exploring we found this cool log bridge across the river and the kids had fun walking across it.

Emily, Colby, Paul and Alex had a great time exploring with Aunt Traci. Jen told Traci to not let the boys get wet. They were being very careful until the end. Alex was walking across a rock path through the river and also a small log across the river balancing without any trouble. Paul could not be shown up by his younger brother so he tried the rock path and little log too. Well Paul had a harder time balancing and slipped right off the log into the river wading right up to his waist! The look on his face was so funny it was like "Oh no my mom is going to kill me!" We all laughed at him and said "You better get out before your mom spanks Traci's bum for letting you get wet!"

The next day we all went for a bike ride. While at camp, Tyler found an abandoned little bike that was the perfect size for Colby. After seeing that it had been abandoned for a couple days, Tyler picked it up and took it back to our camp for Colby to ride. He figured someone had just forgotten about it and went home without it. Colby loved that little bike and tired to ride it everywhere.

During our bike ride, we rode along all of the bike trails in Pine Valley. We rode from our camp at Ebenezzer all the way to the lake. Emily even rode her own bike! She is getting better at riding but still needs some help. Going to the lake was really easy because it was all down hill. Coming back to camp was another story.

What a life! Colby and Logan rode in the bike trailer and got to sleep the whole time while I had to pull them along. Don't they look so sweet in there sleeping on each others shoulders? When we got to the lake, Logan woke up which means "My eyes are open, I'm hungry!" So he started crying. I decided to head back to camp with them instead of going on. Like I said before going to the lake was easy but coming back to camp was not so easy... I discovered I was very much out of shape! I could not peddle up the hills pulling the bike stroller. I would try with all my might but my legs would literally turn to Jello and I could not go any further. I ended up walking most of the way back. On the way back, a lady stopped me on the trail and asked me if I had seen a little black bike with training wheels. I knew she was talking about Colby's bike so I told her to meet me at our camp. I knew Colby would be sad because he loved that bike but I also knew that if I lied to the lady, I would feel really bad and so would her little son. When we got back to camp, I told Colby we had to give the bike back and to say thank you for letting him ride it. He did say thank you but I don't think he realized what was happening until they drove away with the bike. Then he looked at me and said "They took my bike!" I had to try and explain that it wasn't really his bike and we would get him another one later. He was mad for a little bit but then he seemed to forget and went off to play.

The rest of the day we just hung out, relaxed, and played around:

Grandma Farnsworth brought some fun crafts to do with the kids. Here they are painting Prayer Rocks:

Here are their awesome prayer rocks as well as their colorful fingers!

While the kids painted, the adults relaxed in the shade. Russell even managed to catch a few winks! After the crafts, we all went on a scavenger hunt.

For the scavenger hunt, we had to find a lot of different things in nature and either put it in our bag or take a picture of it. We had to find a deer, fly, butterfly, bug, squirrel, robin, chipmunk, rock, stick, pine cone, flowers and more.

After dinner that night, we had some fun family games. First we had pie eating contests:

These were so funny to watch! And not to leave the kids out, they had their own doughnut eating contest:

This was so cute to watch. Even Colby got into it and tried his best to eat the doughnut without hands. Emily's face was so messy too. But I think Alex was the winner.

We also played Charades and roasted marshmallows for S'mores. We couldn't stop laughing at all of the awesome charades.

The next morning, Russell, Jen, Rick, Tyler, Traci and Traci's friend, Paul, headed out to go Paintballing. While they were gone LeeAnn and I helped the kids make Father's Day cards and play games.

When the paintballers returned, we packed up camp and headed home.