Hoyt Family Reunion!

I'm almost a whole month late, but it wouldn't be summer if we didn't go to the Hoyt Family Reunion! This year our reunion was supposed to be at two lovely cabins at Brianhead, but due to a massive fire in that area we had to make last minute changes to the plan. Poor Anna was in charge and I'm sure it was stressful to come up with alternative plans but she pulled it off great! We ended up using the North Event Center in Orderville, about a mile from my parents house, for all our activities. It's a big community center near the rodeo grounds that consists of two full sized gyms, a kitchen, bathrooms and a conference room. The nice thing was that we were not cramped for space at all. Tyson and the kids and I used Gerry's camp trailer to sleep in each night since the Event Center doesn't have sleeping facilities. The first day we were there we had what I lovingly dubbed the "Redneck Olympics!" Bucky planned the whole thing and did a great job. We had an obstacle course, a baseball throwing competition, and a quarter toss activity. We also did a team building type activity where we held sticks across from partners and the littler kids walked across them. Garrett was very hesitant about it (some of the sticks were pretty thin!) but Bucky convinced him to try it. We ended up moving him across the whole gym with him walking on sticks the whole way. Once he stepped on your stick you hurried back around to the front of the line to continue the path. I thought it was pretty cool! I don't have a picture of any of my kids doing it but I put a picture of my niece, Laine, doing it to show what I mean.

On Saturday we had more fun and games with a carnival where the kids won tickets and then cashed them in for prizes. Tyson even got in on the fun and tried out the cupcake walk! Later that day we spent over three hours playing in the pool at the Zion Ponderosa Resort. It was a really fun afternoon! That night we ate more great food and watched a movie (Frozen) on the big screen.

The reunion ended on a less than positive note however. Somehow a round of the pukes started going through our ranks and almost every family had at least one person get sick! In our family it started out with Drake and then it hit Zac pretty hard too. Our drive home on Sunday was pretty eventful! It took a couple hours extra time to account for the 5 roadside puke stops! But we made it eventually and the boys did recover after awhile, but it was a pretty nasty bug! Despite the unfortunate stomach bug incidents we really had a great time! All of my family was there except for Heide (my niece, Millie, has been in Primary Children's Hospital a lot this summer) and my brother Dillon (who is a park ranger in Wyoming preparing for the big full solar eclipse event.)