Dinner Group

One more item that I intended to blog about, but haven't yet - dinner group.  A friend from the ward started a dinner group with 4 other ladies some time in the fall of last year.  In March, one of the families dropped out and I got to be the replacement.  I had heard about the group and was really excited to participate.

Here's how it worked - every week, you cooked five of the same meal on your assigned day, one for your family and four others to deliver to the other dinner group members.  On the rest of the days (Monday through Friday only) you made a salad, maybe cooked some green beans, maybe cooked some rice or pasta (to go with the main dish) and then waited for your dinner to be delivered!  I think the rules were - delivered ready to eat by 5, or ready to cook by 3.  It was so awesome!  We ate dinner at a decent hour every single week night, my kids tried new things, clean-up was a breeze!  This my sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but it was like a little Christmas gift 4 days a week.  The only drawback was on my cooking day, my kitchen was a DISASTER.  and it usually took almost 2 hours to clean everything up, but even then, because I had to have it delivered by 5, we were eating at 6 even on my days to cook.  I was really sad to give it up in May when we moved into the TLF.  It was one of the best ideas EVER.  I took the picture above on one of my cooking days.  The kitchen doesn't look too bad in that picture, but that is just at the very beginning of the cooking... by the end, that stack of towels would be down by 4 or 5, those bowls would be at the bottom of an extremely large stack etc....

I would love to do it again here, and I am sort of keeping my eyes open for potential members.

Family Reunion Recap

Since I have pretty much given up on  sleep...here are some posts about things that happened in the last six months.  First up - Family Reunion Recap.  My family gets together every other year - the even years for a Reunion.  Each time, one sibling and their spouse (if they are married) is in charge - meaning booking the place, coordinating activities, meals, etc...Two summers ago it was our turn, this year it was Geoff and Kristen's turn.  They did a great job.  The most difficult part is deciding where everyone is going to sleep.  Families with babies generally get priority - we are having another baby before the next reunion for this reason alone.  (Ha, ha ha)  Once everybody is assigned a room, switched rooms and finally settled in, the rest is easy. 
 
First, a  picture of Daniel getting injured during the picture scavenger hunt.  Geoff and Kristen ran this activity, it was a lot of fun.  Our team probably should have won, but I think they gave it to Daniel's team out of sympathy or something. ;)  We were supposed to get a picture of our team carrying another team member (Daniel).  Too bad for Daniel that he arrived at the reunion with a serious bruise to the ribs and we (Christopher) did more damage.  We thought he was teasing, but as his face clearly shows, he was in a lot of pain. Chris and I were talking later and remembered that when we saw his brother and kids at Bear Lake (same location) a few years ago, he broke his brother's ribs also.  Hmmmm....  Better watch your back, it might be you next time.

Daniel and his family - Miriam, Eva and Alexander.  Miriam is due next month, but they think the baby will come any day now.   Their activity was World Cup related - we watched a lot of World Cup while we were there, the kids loved the word search with Daniel's color commentary. 

Grandma and Opa with all of the kids.  Paige loved Garrett and still talks about him.  Cute kids, right?  Grandma and Opa were in charge of Family Home Evening.  

Geoff is getting ready to catch a baseball (distraction method) not telling us to stop taking his picture.  Is Cameron getting ready to catch the ball or hit his dad?  I think Kristen has run like 300 races this year and my mom said the other night that she is doing a triathlon this weekend.  Go Kristen!  They were great planners and I think when our year comes around again, we'll just pay them to do it for us. 

Andrew, Carly, Beckam.  I have been bribing Maggie to braid her hair on the side since the reunion thanks to Carly.  She didn't believe me that it was coo, but you know if Carly does it, it's cool.  Carly and Andrew planned a game -kind of like Jeopardy.  It was really fun and reminded me why sibling relationships are so important to me - we have a lot of history and I really like all of them and now all of their spouses.  Plus, how cute is Beckam? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was fun to get together and see everyone.  It takes some serious coordinating and some sacrifice (Geoff's kids missed school, Miriam was pregnant and uncomfortable, Carly's parents had just left town etc....) but it is really so  worthwhile to get everyone together.  We had some structured activities and some unstructured time and it was all good.  Some other highlights:

* riding the boat around the lake - the water was still sooooo cold - it wasn't really swimming temperature yet.  But almost everyone still jumped in off the boat - including Maggie and Ashlee.
* the guided tour of the nearby caves - we lucked out and got an accidentally hilarious  guide.  We will still be quoting him and talking about it at the next reunion. 
*seeing Andrew, Carly and Beckam be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple before the reunion...

Time always goes by so quickly, I am already looking forward to the next time we get together.  Sorry, no pictures of Jennifer and Heather - I didn't take very many pics...