Monday, August 11, 2008

A Little Bit of Here and Now


I have debated about putting this on the blog, but the nice thing is if someone wants to skip over this posting, it is easily done. I just wanted to give you a quick insight into our neat week at Brian Head, where our family got together for four days. We were at almost 10,000 feet high, and I think we all found our energy level depleted, as well as our appetites. We were missing John and his family, and Jim's wife Lori (her mother was having some serious medical problems), and so there were definite holes in humor, and the late night discussions, but we did the best we could.


This "cabin" (behind the trees) belongs to the parents of a friend of Nate and Bridget's. It made for a lovely escape and a wish from all of us for a place to hide from the real world, when the pressures become more than we want to deal with.

We were preparing to head for home, had spent the morning cleaning this monster cabin, and were all very tired. Front row: Laura, Kristen, Ann (the sun definitely bleached out the color in my hair - when did it get so gray?), Paul and Beth. Back row: Jim, Greg and Nathan.


This is the whole group. The sun hit just as we were trying to finish up and there was no way we were ever going to get all of these cute little imps in one place again, so we just went with the picture. Front row: Savannah, Isabel, Jessica, Jack, Shaun, Lucas, Jacob, Kaitlin; Second row: Jim, Pheobe, Shane, Shea, Brooks, Laura and Kristen; Back row, Paul and Ann, Bridget holding Jonah, Nathan, Kim, Colby, Spencer, Kelsey (peaking around), Beth and Jerry, Greg, and Matt holding Eli.

Bonsai trees at Brian Head.



There was a little bird's nest in the wreath on the front door to the cabin. She would fly in and out of her nest, scold us like crazy for disturbing her peace, fly into the cabin when the door was opened, and then the kids would form the bird patrol chain across the upstairs rec. room, open the French doors and shoo her outside.

It was a wonderful week - and exhausting. We should be ready to do it again, in a year or two.

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

So glad you posted this! Thanks for sharing your family and your week. The strong family loyalty is a real treasure for all of you to hold on to; we know it wasn't done without effort on everybody's part. As one who grew up with few cousins my own age, it's fun to see these cousins having opportunities to know each other and enjoy (and make mischief) being together.

Judy said...

No one would pass up this chance to peek at the Tanner Family week together. What are the numbers of cousins, ie grandkids? The pictures are inspiring and you have a wonderful family.

Ann said...

We had seventeen of the 21 grandchildren there, and 10 out of 12 adults. Kelsey is the oldest grandchild - she is 16 years old, and Jonah is the youngest. And you are right about the building of relationships between cousins. They call each other "friend", some are emailing back and forth, when we get together, others just pick up where they left off, as though it was just yesterday when they were together last. Hopefully these times together will give them the family ties that will be helpful as time goes by. We have been very fortunate to have this work out - but everybody just has to do what works for them. When we give it our "best shot", no matter what that is, that is the part that counts.