Mecham Family Reunion 2012

Last week we attended the Mecham Family reunion.  Every year, Anthon's family rotates who is in charge of the reunion and this year was our year.  It takes a lot of work to plan a family reunion!

A few months ago we decided we would hold the reunion at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho.  It's about 3 hours away from our house, so kinda far, but not too far.  We booked some cabins and tent spots at the KOA there and then I kinda procrastinated planning anything else about it until about 2 weeks ago. 

It's a small town and the biggest attraction there is the hot springs and the Olympic Pool.  Since we would be arriving on Wednesday and leaving Friday, we planned on spending pretty much all of Thursday at the hot springs and pool.

The biggest thing to plan is the food.  We had to feed 32 people, 5 meals.  I tried to plan yummy stuff, but also easy stuff because we would be camping and wouldn't have access to a sink or a stove or regular kitchen stuff. 

Somehow we got it all planned and organized in time.  We bought a large cooler to keep all the perishables cool and a Camp Chef so we could cook the meals.  Anthon was very happy to get the Camp Chef and after we bought it, we went to Cabela's because Anthon wanted to get a bunch of accessories for it.  I talked him out of a lot of stuff, but he said he wanted to go back later without me so he could get what he wanted.

Here's my brother-in-law Matt cooking breakfast on the Camp Chef.

The meals I planned were pancakes, bacon, sausage and eggs for breakfast on Thursday, sack lunch of sandwiches, chips and dessert for our lunch at the pool, taco salad for dinner Thursday night, fruit parfaits and juevo rancheros for breakfast Friday and we ordered pizza for lunch Friday. 

Here's our yummy parfaits.

Here's our little cabin.  It didn't have a bathroom, but it did have air conditioning.

Wednesday night, most everyone was there and Anthon organized a group to go floating down the river.   It sounded like a lot of fun, but since I had a tired little boy, I stayed behind and took care of him.  Just part of being a mom :)

Thursday was pool day.  It was a really cool pool.  It has water slides, a kiddie area, an indoor pool, diving boards a rock climbing wall and three really tall platforms.

Here's Jr. on the rock climbing wall:

Anthon was super brave and signed a waiver so that he could jump off the platforms.  No one else would jump with him.  He did the first and second platforms.  I'm glad he didn't try the highest one.

Everyone had to evacuate the pool twice that day because when someone jumps off the platform and doesn't hit the water feet first, they evacuate everyone and have to check the person to make sure they were ok.  One woman left on a stretcher and the other girl was ok.

Damon fell asleep in my arms, in the pool, after we'd been there for a few hours so I took him back to the cabin for a nap.  A couple hours later, everyone else came back.  The kids had played hard and were pretty tired after a full day in the sun and water.

Damon enjoyed all the dirt and rocks that we were surrounded by in the camp ground:

Thursday night we had the family meeting in which we all went around and talked about what our family had been up to during the past year.  That usually takes a couple hours because there are so many kids in Anthon's family.  After that, most people went to bed, but Anthon wanted to go back to the hot springs.  I wanted to go, but Damon was sleeping again, so he and Danielle went.  A mom's job is never done.

On Friday they went on another river run (again, Damon needed a nap so I stayed behind) and we packed up camp, checked out and went to a park to eat our pizza.  We hung out for a couple hours and then left the reunion and headed home.

Here's a picture of all of us:

I think everyone had fun and we all needed to catch up on some sleep.