More Rumpusness

Hi - The completion of reunionrumpusness.............................. :-)

WILD RUMPUS..................................!!!

WIIIIILD RUMPUS!!!

WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILD RUMPUS!...........

and, wave your arms in the air and shout "WILD RUMPUS!"

 And how, I ask you, did this:..................

and this.......

...........and this............

......and this.....

and this.......

TURN INTO THIS:

AND THIS?

I love you goofballs. 16 for 16 you each crack me up in these silly photos!

"Disaffected teens" is a keeper! Andrea said her kids haven't mastered it yet, they can only look "mad" :-)

Calvin and Carly, please stay frozen at your ages forever, okay?

Sixteen grandchildren in 16 years....those happy, golden years!


After the Hallstroms arrived on Thursday afternoon, we were complete, and set to go for a wild weekend!! Here we are having dinner together. I think there are only four people missing in this picture..

Angie brought a fun game for the adults to play and dad even played (and the big kids wanted to play a version of it too and would have into the night if hadn't been so late when we got through!). I told Ang she was born to be behind a lecturn. She said, yes mother, I use a lecturn when I teach. Well, of course she does.....and I hope she shows off that cute Sweat dimple while teaching!

Below is one of my favorite photos. While we adults played games inside, the little kids played outside. I let them make mud pies using muffin tins and even hauled the play kitchen and utensils from the basement. I did the hauling quietly and quickly without other adults seeing because....I'm crazy. The photo below was taken in the dead of night with the floodlights on in the back yard, which I don't think we've used more than a couple of times in the 12 years we've lived here. Living in the bottoms of the Jordan River has its pluses, but it also has its negatives, and those are nighttime bugginess and nighttime river stinkiness. But this night was without either of those and the kids played and played. They kept asking me if they could make mud pies again the next day but it was a one-shot deal. Kind of like Play dough. ..... the mess is only worth it once a year (or every two years :-)!

Friday morning August 15th dawned beautifully. Blue skies, sunshine, no wind. YAY! (side note, the next weekend it rained and rained and I was so grateful we had a pretty weekend for our reunion). I told Forrest (didn't ask him, told him) that he was going to start the rumpus weekend by buying donuts for breakfast Friday morning. And he didn't disappoint. That super duper chocolate cake donut with chocolate frosting that I ate was divine. And he found a place called "Daylight Donuts" that's right by Home Depot that I never knew existed. I will go there again.

We had scheduled a water slide and bounce house to be delivered to the house around 9:00 a.m. Sure enough, this dude pulls up about 8:45, jauntily pushes a dollie with the bounce house under wraps and bungie cords through the gate and into the back yard, and in 20 minutes flat had it up and running. SWEET! People have such interesting jobs. "Yes, I deliver bounce houses to people, inflate them, and then return in the evening and deflate them...."

20 pictures (mostly stolen from Andrea):

..............we always need a photo of the guns....................

This is such a cute snapshot in time of Whitney and Emma. We need a back fence, so that photos don't look like they're shot in the outskirts of Saudie Arabia.........

Andrea and I have a thing about her and ironing. It started when we were in NC one time and visited a museum where there was an old-fashioned iron and ironing board in one of the homes and Whitney said "What's that?" and Andrea and I looked at each other and got the giggles. But lest you get the wrong idea, I found when we visited them this summer, that Andrea is actually the QUEEN of all things laundry. We were constantly saying "where's Andrea? (answer, doing the wash), and then once she came back into the kitchen we'd pester her with "dirty or clean Andrea, dirty or clean?" The poor girl - we didn't give her a moment's peace!

Here are Hercules and Tinkerbell's hands...aka Wyatt Dean and Carly June.

Oh the fun we had down at Tony and Cindy's house in Springville on Saturday! We invaded their beautiful new home, got the tour, and two huge pans of mint brownies that Cindy made and two huge pans of "Chocolate lasagne" that Elise and I made. The little girls went into the basement and found more dress-ups, the boys went upstairs to the toys and video game, and the big kids rocked the house around the roundtable with Elise on guitar and Reagan on ukelele (and Brandon on.....?). One night at our house we had an impromptu moment where some of the kids sang the "Army of Helaman/Sisters in Zion" medley and it was sooooo beautiful. Everyone has such gorgeous voices, exceptional really. Seriously!

We had our family photo shoot. We now have 234 photos to enjoy. I LOVE THEM ALL AND WILL ONLY INCLUDE PHOTO #1 here. Otherwise I will get overwhelmed with trying to choose....And the rocks have now been moved out of the field so it was a perfect alignment of photography zen that all came together for us!

Then we went up into the canyon right above Tony and Cindy's home and played kickball. It was great to get out an move our muscles and kickball is a game every age can play. Except I tried to kick the ball off the record when the game was over, and my hips don't swing any more!

The evening ended up with all of us driving up to Sundance to watch "Fiddler on the Roof." We had to sit one hill higher than usual and we were rather precariously perched and it was hard to see the expressions on the actor's faces, but it was a thrilling evening, and so much fun to wrap up in blankets and sweatshirts when the nighttime chill set in. Amy was so patient and helped the little kids learn to play SkipBo Junior game but I'm pretty sure I didn't read the directions to her correctly. It was still fun though.

We busted out Uno too. Andrew's kids thought he looked "manly" wearing dad's jacket!

See Calvin with the little iphone? The ipad saved the day after he'd been up there for hours on end. Hooray for electronics when you've got a 3-year-old at a 3-hour play!

Next time we go I'm springing for SEATS. I wonder what next year's play will be? How fun to anticipate! It was interesting after the play was over, to watch the long lines of people snaking up the mountain toward their cars in the far away parking lots, mimicking the storyline of the play moments earlier, where the townspeople of the little Russian town of Anatevka set off walking into an unknown new life. This year I did much better on that long climb at high altitudes. I think I'm getting younger, oh wait, there's those hips that can't kick a ball any more!

Here we are preparing Sunday dinner with my potato peelers and their potato peelers. We were talking about "cooking injuries" and I said I've seen more blood on the cooking show "Chopped" than I've seen anywhere and Elise, literally right on cue, sliced her finger open with the potato peeler! It was ouchy but also pretty funny. She couldn't have done it better if we had rehearsed it.

We said good-bye to Amy and Dave and Jack and Macy and Carly and Andrew and Andrea and Brandon and Whitney and Caroline on Monday, August 18th. That's a lot of people to say good-bye to. If I knew how to add sad emoticons onto the blog I would do that here. ....

We had the Hallstrom clan all to ourselves for a few days!

Visited grandma and grandpa Hiatt. I believe this stuffed animal was won by Wyatt at Lagoon and his name is Bugsby.

We celebrated Ethan's impending 18th birthday at Grandma and Grandpa Hiatt's with peach dessert, and candles stuck into rolls. Goodness. Sometimes if I need to make something work my mind goes into MacGyver Mode and scrambles around inside my skull to come up with a solution, any solution. Not on important matters, just for things like this, where we're going out the door, and I'm rushing around thinking what will hold up these candles because they'll fall over in the peach dessert... let's see.....create something out of a dishtowel? shove them into little decorative soaps? poke holes into grapes? ROLLS!!! Cha-ching.

Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandson talking shop (movies) as though there were no age difference. Pretty cool.

And not to be outdone, Grandpa Hiatt had some good stories to tell too!

We took a walk/scooter ride another evening along the Jordan River and WOW, mother nature gave us a show! The skies were exploding with sheet lightening and pink hues.

EEEEE and me. It seems like only yesterday that we rejoiced in the first little grandson and now he's off to BYU. What a handsome, cool dude!!

 
We celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary while Angie and Forrest were still in town with us. We went to Market Street and had oysters. Oysters always taste better with Angie and Forrest. We had Oysters on our Oregon trip but they don't serve them with shaved horseradish which adds such a nice crunch. I like food. I like Angie and Forrest.

....and Dennis too!

We also had the opportunity to attend BYU Education Week with Angie and Forrest and Cindy and listen to Tony teach his class on the Savior and the atonement. When I watch each of my children succeed and do things, it's kind of an out of body experience. You're my little girl or little boy, but you've become a whole different creature. A grown-up, accomplished and polished. I've always felt like I was watching from afar, and your childhoods existed on another planet. Having the opportunity to attend Tony's class this year, I felt like, how can I say any better than it was wow, just wow, he is teaching me things I needed to hear. They say he was once my little boy. I left feeling refreshed and rejuvinated and understanding the Savior better. I Loved it. I'd noticed when I read the list of presenters for this year's Education Week, that one of the presenters was David Bean who is head of the Institute at Princeton University. His grandmother is my Aunt Barbara Hiatt Bean (my dad's sister). It turned out that he spoke right after Tony and in the same building. They let me take their photo. I told him my name was Barbara Hiatt Sweat. He was in the middle of setting up to teach and we didn't have time to talk, but it was fun to see the look on his face as he heard his own grandmother's name coming out of a strange lady who was trying to talk to him as he got his microphone around his neck. I always think people look alike, and maybe there's a little Hiatt in both of them?

Elise and I and Grandma and Grandpa Hiatt went to the Farmer's Market. I love the vibe at Farmer's Markets. Lots of young families strolling around and if it's a good day, funky music playing in the background and at least one young mother with her new baby in a gauzy wrap that she's got hanging in front of her as though the baby hasn't been born yet. It's the BEST! (I just noticed there's a pregnant lady in this picture, so just picture that her baby has been born and is being held in front of her by the new earthy gauzy slings). Elise and I stopped by a cupcake store nearby called "One Sweet Slice" and she was in heaven. It was one of her favorite things!

We also visited Scheels one day and this photo makes me laugh!

I was telling Elise that her middle name "Julia" is because she is named after her Great-Great-Grandmother, Julia Roundy Hiatt. This photo is included in this post to wrap all generations of time into it. Isn't Grandpa Hiatt cute? He kind of reminds me of Jack!

We played Uncle Wiggley.

And then we all went down to Provo together to drop Ethan off at BYU. And leave him there all by himself while we went home without him. It never ceases to amaze when you drop off a child at college. It was so touching, he gave his siblings some brotherly advise as we were pulling away. Basically he told them "don't sweat the small stuff!"

...........there he goes...........ahead of all of us.................so ready for this next step in his life!

There you have a few "sweet slices" of the Sweat family Reunion 2014! I'm so grateful for our forever family. Each of you is priceless to me. Thank you for all of the love and caring and kindness and time and fun and planning and energy and enthusiasm and unselfishness and resources that you contributed, each one of you, to make this possible. It gives me something to look forward to all year long and something to remember forever - and that's what makes the world go around!!

XO Mom