2012 Ellsworth Reunion - Ludlow, VT

Tah Dah!...again.  

Yes, just a couple of weeks after the Arave reunion we were blessed with more reuniting.

Enter: The Ellsworth Family Reunion

Dad:  This makes me think of Vermeer, if he were a photographer... into images of older men, rather than young women. 

Activities included: 

Hot Pinata

The fact that Eamon's Birthday Pinata is a home-made Earth will contribute to Ira's confusion since I made that Earth-day Cake.  He always wants to sing the "Happy Earthday" song.  

Lighting bug making

(I stole this idea from the Arave reunion, only I was too lazy to make holes for the legs or find sticky googly eyes.  Th kids were really creative.  I think among the bugs, there was a lightning lobster, and "lightning thug."

Hat Wearing

Corn Hole

  

Yes, after a very serious and competitive Corn-hole Competition, Anthony became Champion.  We've already framed the duct tape belt of honor and hung it over our mantel (as if we had one.)  He won everyone's forgiveness for missing the past two reunions, and has now been accepted into the clan. :)

Swimming at the Buttermilk Falls

I wish I had some good pictures of us jumping of the mini-cliff.  I was impressed with the gutsiness of some of the younger nieces and nephews.  

The Loop

Chilling in Ludlow, VT

Visiting the Black River Acadamy Museum.  It was right across the street from us, and was the childhood school of Calvin Coolidge.

Duct tape art

 Improvised rain storm slip and slide

 Hiking...or at least strolling

 Ben and Jerry's Factory

Mmmm...I can still taste the Chocolate Therapy free sample

Sharon, VT-birthplace of Joseph Smith.  

I'm also embarrassed I didn't take any pictures there.

We also had fun blueberry picking, visiting the Vermont Country Store, and that cute cheese factory whose name I can't remember.

Ira loved playing dinosaurs and rough housing with all his cousins.

I miss everyone already.  I think we need to have another reunion soon. 

 How about in a couple of months? :)  

Arave Family Reunion

Wow!  So much has happened since our last post.  We've been too busy to write about it all I guess.  But things aren't about to slow down any time soon.

The Arave Reunion was excellent.  

But it all started out (at least for our branch of the family) with a two hour delayed flight, and a missed connecting flight, resulting in a 20 hour layover.  This is how we felt about it:

 Ira: Zombie mode at 11:00 pm  

 Eliot: Fairly neutral.  He had the benefit of little to no biological clock to tell him when to sleep.

 Ant: A little suicidal...if you count death by cell phone. 

 Me: Building up some assertiveness to whip out at the Delta people. 

But, the blessing from it all was that we were in the Detroit Airport, about 20 minutes away from our old apartment.  Ant posted a call for help on FB and some of our awesome friends came to pick us up even though it was super late and they had just gotten back from Nauvoo!  The next morning we got to the ward pancake 4th of July breakfast and saw some of our friends we're really excited to live by again soon. 

Enter: The Arave Family Reuinion (Anthony's Mom's side for those you don't know)

 Tah Dah!  What a beautiful family!  We were (almost) all smiling in this photo despite Ira wailing, "I want the poopoo (purple) car!"  

 Goodmorning.

 Ira had bloody blisters from playing with these trucks non-stop.

 What a cute Grandma..I mean Grandpa in a Grandma hat. 

Activities included:

 crazy rope swinging.

Volleyball

 Canoeing

Rope Coursing

The missionaries at the Heber Valley Girl's camp were quoted as saying, "Sheesh, the way these kids act, you'd think they have a ropes course in their back yard!"

 

Sunset viewing

Awesome Arave themed game playing

Eliot holding and so, so much more.

What a blessing it is to be in a family with people we enjoy being around so much.  Sorry for the abrupt ending, but we have about 4 more posts to get to!  

To be continued...

End of June

I was about to write a post about the Arave reunion, when I realized that it had been weeks since our last post, so I'll try to let the pictures do most of the talking.  

Therapy Party.  Yes.  My favorite board game, Therapy came in the mail a few weeks ago.  So we made brain jello and Rorschach cookies and invited the Millards and Millers over.  We all had babies a few weeks apart, so it was fun to have a little baby reunion. 

Eliot's many faces of waking up...in the order they occurred.  

We just had his 3 month check up.  He's up to 15 lbs 1 oz.  Weight is now in the 75%tile and Height and Head Circumference in the 95th. He is a big cutie. 

We drove up to Massachusetts to see our friends John and Beth Bond get hitched.  It was a beautiful wedding.  John is a work friend from GE.

Speaking of GE, we almost know where we're heading.  sigh...  Seriously.  I think in a week we should know for sure.  Ant's had three official offers, and we're strongly leaning towards one.