Christmas 2021

We got back from the family reunion with some souvenirs… Almost all of us got pretty sick. A lot of the family members had been sick with various ailments and we brought it home as a souvenir. Sadly most of my Christmas break with spent recovering but there were a few highlights!

 

We got together on Christmas day to open presents. We were able to have Conute with us this year as well. Taylor got creative with his present wrapping for Taylor‘s present ha ha. I posted a video of it on TickTock and it went viral.

We also got to play games and decorate cookies and spend some time together.

This is the gift I made for the Taylor's which was a flower arrangement under glass using the flowers left over from their wedding that I had drying in the garage for months. 

Maddie's favorite part of Christmas is getting her stocking!

Angela and Robert's family got to go up to Loyalton and visit with Mom and Jim and spend Christmas with them. They had a white Christmas and had their fill of snow!

For Ashley's gift I made her a sweater! It was my first attempt. It was labeled as a "weekend sweater" but it took me weeks, ha ha. I have to say it turned out pretty good considering I didn't have her with me to try it on. The sleeves were a little long but the rest of it was fine. 

A few days after Christmas we got to have our annual White Elephant Gift Exchange with the Olesons (usually we have the Zooks too but they were in Loyalton) It didn't disappoint ...we had a lot of crazy gifts. 

Cute couple cooking in the kitchen. 

 

December 2021 Family Reunion

 After months of planning we finally had our Boyer/Bartels family reunion! Right after I got out of school we started driving up to St. George. All of our kids met us in St. George. Ashley and Conute and Jacob came down from Idaho and the Taylor‘s drove up their own car.

Because we had so much family we had multiple Airbnb’s. There was a main house that Steve and Dale’s family stayed in where we had most of our meals and get together’s and then at night we went back to our own house.

Almost the entire family was able to go to the reunion. The only ones that weren’t able to make it were Kenny’s family and Elsa who was on her mission. We were grateful to have everyone there.

We had different committees to plan different things. Everyone liked their shirts. There was a food committee that did a great job on our meals that we had together and then an activities committee. We did games like family feud, and then we did a park day where we did outdoor games like gunnysack races and corn hole and other things. My favorite was the talent show. We had a variety of talents and can you even jumped in and played a song on his ukulele.

During the reunion we celebrated everyone’s birthdays that were recent including Taylor roses. We saying to them and had pies and cakes to celebrate.

We also did a baby blessing at the house. The local Bishop was able to come over and approved us to do sacrament meeting as a family and then do the baby blessing. Normally we would all be able to be there.

One of the other excursions we did was a hike that was local. Some of the group went down inside of some caves but I stayed on top. I’m not so much a fan ha ha is still beautiful and still a little bit chilly.

The last day of the reunion we all dressed up and went and got family pictures taken. I stood behind the photographer and snacks family pictures so that I could have them for our yearly calendars.

After the reunion our family drove to Zion for a couple of days before we headed back to California. Jacob Ashley and Jeff and I went to Zions and the Taylor‘s went to Bryce since they had just been to science a few months before.

I had never been to this area in the winter time in the snow against the red rocks with striking. We did a number of hikes and try not to slip on the frozen ground. (Except Jacob who stayed in the car most the time with a headache)

The Taylors came back from their hike not feeling good so we didn’t really see them at all. It wasn’t too surprising because a lot of the family was sick at the reunion. So… I guess that’s the after affects of doing a family reunion with sick family members.

In the next week Jeff and I ended up getting pretty sick as well. Made a difficult holiday season once we got home but we at least were able to enjoy the reunion while we were up there.