Bear Lake

It used to be that the Phillips would all get together at Thanksgiving or Christmas each year, but that isn't always the case anymore. We decided to have a reunion over the summer at Bear Lake and amazingly it worked out that everyone was able to come. 

When we were looking for flights, we discovered that flights from Oregon to Utah are actually more expensive in the summer than at Christmas. We fork out the $250 per ticket at Christmas because winter can be a bad/unpredictable time to drive that route, but we weren't willing to spend over $300 a ticket in the summer. We realized that we could get a hotel room in Boise (the halfway point) for just over $100 a night. Even with gas, that was going to be way cheaper than the $1,500 it was going to cost us to fly. Plus that way we wouldn't have to rent or borrow a car in Utah and we could bring as much stuff as we wanted.

So we planned to leave the day before the reunion was going to start, drive 6 hours to Boise, sleep there, wake up, and finish the final 6-7 hours in the morning. The moon was huge and amazing the whole drive to Boise. I took so many pictures trying to capture it and I'm not sure I was successful, but this gives you some idea.

As we were leaving our house, I pulled up the email with our hotel reservation and discovered that I had accidentally booked the wrong night on the way there. We called the hotel and they had one room available that night, but it had one king instead of two queens. They were so nice about it and said they would just switch our reservation over (even though the king room was technically more expensive). So we threw some sleeping bags in the car and were on our way. We got there late (like midnight PST, but 1:00 am MST), so we rolled out the sleeping bags and the kids fell right asleep.

The next morning we had breakfast (included with our room) and then got gas as we were leaving town. Not having to pump gas is one of my favorite things about Oregon, so when we have to pump our own gas outside of Oregon it's like, "Ugh, I can't believe I have to pump my own gas!" (Same thing with paying sales tax.)

Each family was in charge of a meal, so we stopped in Logan to get a few things that I didn't buy in Oregon because I didn't want to have to worry about keeping them cold on our way (like the roasts). (I was making French Dip Sandwiches, Stuffed Potatoes, and S'mores Cookie Bars.) Then we finished driving to Bear Lake. 

We had rented a house big enough for all of us that overlooked the lake. 

That lake is gorgeous! I snapped some pictures one night at sunset and unlike the moon pictures, these actually turned out better than I could have hoped for.

The house had a good sized backyard where we spent a lot of time playing various yard games.

Kenzie had brought an American Ninja Warrior course that was a big hit.

The day we had planned to play on the lake was only in the 60s and the water was so cold it took your breath away for a few seconds when you jumped in, but we had fun nonetheless.

We had rented this huge water trampoline for a few hours and it was the best part of the lake. 

Logan didn't last long out on the lake and just wanted to be held when we got back to the beach.

I held him so long that he fell asleep in my arms in the the warmth of my towel. I didn't mind one bit!

These crazy cousins had fun playing on the beach.

After the lake they wanted to get right in the pool (even though it wasn't much warmer than the lake). And then they wanted to go back the next day!

Everyone said we needed to try raspberry shakes, so we went into town and got some one afternoon.

There was lots of game playing.

And of course Hand and Foot after the kids were in bed.

While we had everyone together we took family pictures. A week or so before the reunion, Cooper and then Cade, Rex's youngest two boys, came down with a mysterious rash. No doctor could agree on what it was and there was much debate about if they should come to the reunion. In the end it was decided that they had to come (and we'd just have to try to prevent the spread of the mystery disease) because we had spent too much time and energy figuring out what everyone was going to wear for these pictures. Hah! Not to mention the money we'd spent on the matching cousin t-shirts. I felt so bad for Edda because I'm sure she was so stressed the whole time trying to keep the germs from spreading. Fortunately her efforts paid off and no one else got the rash. And we ended up with some pretty great pictures!

I just love how the cousin t-shirts turned out.

We took these pictures on the last night and I said if we ever do shirts like these again, we need to take them in the morning and then they will be so cute and matching for the whole day!

Edda took this picture the night before we took the family pictures when she was figuring out the lighting. Amazing, right!

It was our first time meeting Leo.

And it was just so great to have everyone together! Rog's grandpa was even able to come up from St. George and be there for the fun. It was technically a 4 day, 3 night reunion, but 2 of those days were only partial days, so really we only had 2 full days together. It went by so quick, but we fit in a lot of fun. We might have worn out the older generations. 😂 Like father, like son!

 

On Sunday we were in charge of delivering Great Grandpa Phillips to his shuttle in Orem, but we made sure we left with enough time to stop in Logan and take some pictures of Logan with the Logan Temple. 

Fortunately the fun didn't stop there. We stayed at Taylor and Martha's house for a few days after the reunion and fit in a lot of our favorite Utah Valley things. I'll post about that next!