Thanks to our fearless planning committee of Amy, Megan, and Jessica, we were able to pin down Memorial Day weekend in Vegas as the actual spot. Amy found us a house we could rent for the weekend at homeaway.com. For a venue, I would rate it a 4.5 out of 5 stars. The amount of space was great, the backyard was awesome (even if the hot tub was not really hot tub temperature), and the kitchen was a good size. I wouldn't give it a 5 because most of the beds were way too firm, and the kitchen utensil situation was a little sketchy. But we made it work, and we had a great time.
Saturday we settled in most of us by late afternoon, did some grocery shopping, kids jumped in the pool as soon as possible, and we enjoyed lasagna for dinner.
Sunday Amy treated us to a breakfast of waffles, and the rest of the day we lounged and did pretty much whatever we wanted. A few of us went to church for a bit, and many swam and sunned themselves by the pool. Elaine and Hugh proved to be the biggest users of the pool. Notice the nice kiss of the sun on their skin in this photo! :)
On Sunday night we spent quite a bit of time going through old photos Jessica and Matt had rescued from the old Montana house. We had quite a few laughs as we remembered things from the pictures. Some photos also got thrown away. No worries. I still came home with plenty of gems of myself from my youth. ;) I'd scan one and put it right here if our scanner were hooked up. (ok, maybe not...)
Monday, a group of us headed out to a morning hike of Ice Box Canyon at Red Rock Park. Several made it all the way to the end, but we all agreed that it was a far more strenuous hike than the park guide would lead you to believe. There was an awful lot of rock scrambling on that trail. But it was good to get hot and sweaty and hike a new trail. Others did Zumba back at headquarters with Jill in the lead. We had an early BBQ dinner before most headed off to see Mystere at Treasure Island. (They brought back some choice moves to show off when they returned. I'm sure one of them could become a Cirque acrobat someday!) Enoch and I and Kim and Nate stayed with the kids under the age of 5. They played for a while and went to bed--all but Hugh. He stayed up nearly until his parents got home. But literally three minutes before they came in the door, sleep overtook him on the couch. It was pretty cute. I wish I had taken a picture, but I wasn't good about getting photos during the reunion. Hopefully I can remedy that at a future reunion.
On Tuesday morning, we had family photos taken by Chris Jenkins, someone Megan found on the internet. They turned out really well from what we've seen so far. Nice work, Megan! Then we enjoyed more pool time throughout the day, and a few of the adults went to the Strip in the evening to see the Bellagio and such.
By Wednesday morning, those who were flying had left the house by about 9 AM and the rest of us packed up and were out by around 11. It was good times, and a little hard to come back to real life.
We'll have to do it again sometime sooner rather than later. The debate is if we should try to do one every two years or every three. Vegas was a great location because it was pretty central and more easy and economical for people to fly into. But we'll see where and when the Wilkinson clan descends next!
No comments:
Post a Comment