Kimball Family Reunion

Every 3 years, the Kimball side of the family (Matt's Dad's family) has a reunion. This time was Momma Kimball's turn to plan the reunion and she planned for us to go to Bear Lake.

We rented two cabins, the Papa Bear Cabin (15 bedrooms) and the Baby Bear Cabin (3 bedrooms). Nicole, upon hearing these names, asked me, "Are we staying in the Three Bears house?" The whole time we were there, she thought we were staying at the three bears house and it was super cute.

The Kimball side of the family is not a small family. There are the children of Grandma and Grandpa Kimball: (Claudia), Janet (Roger), Linda (Dave), (Diane), Grant (Brenda), and Kevin (Theresa). Then, there are their children who also have families: Matt and I, Anne and Carlos, Kristy and Omar, Alicia and Brian, Lindsy and Hubby, Jessica and Jesse, Scott and Renee, and Ryan and Vicky. That is... 14 families... over 50 people. We are one big group. But, the cabin we were staying in was huge and Matt and I were able to have a room for us and our kids.

We left Provo on Friday afternoon and drove for 3 hours to get up to Bear Lake. The drive was not so bad, the kids napped for half of it. But, we had to drive through this windy canyon up past Logan and it took an hour to get through and I got car sick and Nicole had to go potty in the middle of the canyon and we had to stop at a potty at a camping ground that was a hole in the ground. Nicole took one look at the potty and freaked out. She said, "No, no, no! It's too dirty, lets find a different potty." But she was brave and she did it.

Friday night, was game night and we played Family Feud and Minute to Win It Games. Then we spent many hours trying to get the kids to go to sleep in our room. Dan was sleeping in a playpen and Nicole on a blow-up mattress. They were so excited about being in a new place that it took a long time.

Saturday, there was a funeral service for Great Uncle Ted Kimball who died a couple months ago. This happened right during the kids nap and lunch time, so we did not attend, but rather decided to let the kids eat and nap to keep them on their schedule.

In the afternoon, we drove to North Beach in Idaho on Bear Lake. The kids have never been to a beach before and we thought that it would be a fun new experience for them. We thought wrong.

They hated the beach! They were fine when we were under the canopy, sitting in the shade on a blanket. But the second we took them down the beach to the water, there was screaming and crying and two little kids clawing their way up me to get out of the water.

Dano enjoyed playing with the squirt guns while under the canopy.

Carlitos, Lucy, and Nicole discovered that the sand was full of shells and then all Nicole wanted to do was sit and collect shells. That was the only time that she was happy while we were on the beach.

There were a couple of volley and soccer balls that someone brought, and Dan just wanted to throw them and chase them. Who needs a beach and water when you have balls?

Matt and I both tried multiple times to get Nicole to like the water. To no avail.

Collected seashells.

Matt finally got Dano to be close to the water without crying. He found him a shovel and Olivia and Dan sat and shoveled the sand.

After an hour and a half, we called it and decided to stop trying to make the kids like the beach and we headed back to the cabin.

After the beach, we ate dinner and Nicole said that she wanted to go to bed. So we put her in the room, closed the door and went off to play some board games. Someone came to us not much later to tell us that they heard screaming and crying coming from our room. Matt went to investigate and discovered that Nicole had locked herself in the room, panicked, threw up, and pooped her pants. Sigh.

We felt really bad because she got so scared and didn't know how to unlock the door and just panicked and we had no idea. So, we cleaned her up, cleaned up the carpet and got her calmed down. We did not close the door again when she was in the room. We learned our lesson... the hard way.

Sunday morning, we woke up, ate breakfast and headed to church at 9am. The church was crazy packed! Everyone on vacation at Bear Lake was going to this one church building and it was crazy. The chapel, cultural hall, stage, and all the surrounding classrooms were full of people for sacrament meeting. There were a good 1200 people there. Just passing the sacrament took almost 30 minutes.

The rest of Sunday, we decided to just chill at the cabin and let the kids play. Their favorite part of the cabin was the playground. At first, Nicole was afraid of it and wouldn't climb up the ladder or go down the slide, but by the end of the weekend she was a pro. Even Dano was a pro. He kept trying to get up the ladder and LOVED going down the slide. Dan is definitely more adventurous than Nicole.

Dan, of course, loved playing with the volley ball on the lawn.

Sunday afternoon, we took family pictures with everyone. I did my makeup outside while the kids were playing on the play ground, but once they saw what I was doing, they came over to check it out. Nicole wanted to curl her eyelashes too. It was pretty funny.

Monday morning, we got up at 5am, and headed back home. The drive home was just as windy and curvy as the ride up and Nicole got a little car sick this time around. We had to stop after the canyon and let her regroup lest she throw up.

We made it home okay around 9am, which was the plan since the kids had their first swim lesson at 10:30am.

More on swim lessons tomorrow.

The whole trip was a lot of fun. We got to play and relax and the kids loved waking up and having friends to play with every day. It was a good vacation/reunion, but I am glad to be home in my own bed and my own home.