Team "Awesome"- Barrett Reunion 2012

 July 21st-27th was the Barrett Family (my side) reunion up at Aspen Grove.  Aspen Grove is a family camp located in the mountains above Sundance ski resort, just 30 minutes from our house.  It is for Brigham Young University Alumni and their families.  It is in a beautiful setting and was one of the best things we have ever done.

Admittedly I was a little concerned about how 26 family members would all get along, or not get along for 6 days of all day togetherness.  Thanks to great accommodations with each family basically with their own suite in the cabin we all got along great.  Aspen grove is all about activities that bring the family together.  Our cabin was situated right near the above "cowboy village".  The kids loved that little place.  There was a bank, a church, a school, a jail, barber shop, tee-pee, train etc.  Any spare moment we had, and there weren't many, that's where they wanted to be.  

Anna a top the bank in cowboy village

 The kids were divided up into groups by age and most of them had a cousin or 2 in their group which made it nice.  The kids would stay with their age group doing arts and crafts, swimming, hiking, archery, rock climbing from 9:15-12, and then 1:30-4pm.  That made the trip so nice because they kids were busy having fun doing all sorts of fun activities, while the adults had "free" time to do a plethora of their own activities.  The things we participated in were mini golf, a lecture on marriage and relationships, rifle shooting, archery, a high ropes course, I took a water color class with my Mom, basketball 3 on 3 tournament, naps, and so on.   The kids were so busy during the day that they were really worn out by night which made putting them to bed pretty easy.

Jane riding her horse

A cheesy jane driving the train

Cousin Luke and miss Jane after a rather chilly swim one evening

Ethan caught a fish in a little pond and then...

They cooked it up for him to eat for breakfast.  He was enjoying it until he realized it still had his eyeballs.  That and he was extremely upset that he had "killed" something.  

Rand and Jane in their reunion shirts

Jane with her hello kitty back pack heading off to her class.  She was really exciting to go until  she actually got there...

Mom and Julie doing their rifle practice.  Mom was a surpringly good shot

One of the gorgeous views.  Ok, Utah is prettier than I remembered

 On Tuesday night in celebration of July 24th and pioneer day when the pioneers entered the Utah Valley.  That night they had a night of games and prizes and treats in cowboy village.  They had a dunk machine, hatchet throw, popping balloons with a whip (my personal favorite ;), a train ride, face painting etc.  Ethan played in a game of Boffers with a bunch of other people for about 3 hours straight.  He loved every minute of it and was exhausted afterwards.

Jane loved her horse.  This may have to be a gift for Christmas...

The Mr. and Mrs. :)

Squaw Anna

 One afternoon they had games for all the families doing different things at different stations.  They asked us to come up with a team name and our was  "Team Awesome".  Nuff said.

 This was during frontier night, panning for gold, and to prove I was on the vacation

 One night a family next to us was doing these "hot air balloons".  They had made them out of tissue paper with a wire hanger holding it open around the bottom.  They just had a pipe on top of a propane stove and put the "balloon" over it until the hot air filled it, and it just lifted off and went into the air.  It. was. amazing!  I loved it.  I want to do that for my birthday or something grand.

 This was Anna during her rock wall climb.  We encouraged the kids to try everything and that they could do "hard things"  Anna got pretty far with some encouraging from me.  This is about where she got scared and was done.

 Randall and my brothers Mark and Nate participated in a 3 on 3 ball tournament and made it to the finals but lost out to an awesome team.  They had a good time despite my brother Mark spraining both of his ankles-whoops.

 BYU has pretty great ice cream so we had to try it of course.  Ethan is looking pretty tired here, and a bit sunburned.

 And of course we had our reunion t-shirts.  It said at the top "Got Roots?"  and then had a tree and Barrett  reunion at the bottom.  My Mom is above, my dad below.  Thanks to them the trip was possible, and it was truly amazing.

 The last night they had closing ceremonies and each age group had practiced a song to perform representing different countries like the olympics.  Ethan's was Mexico, can you tell?  A handsome amigo.

 My brother Jeff's family with 2 of their kids

 Anna and her group from China performing "Kung Fu Fighters"

The trip couldn't have been better thought out, organized, fun etc.  The food was served buffet style in a nice cafeteria and was really very good, and not just good for cafeteria food.  We even had church on Sunday with Sacrament meeting held outside.  It was a beautiful morning and it was a trip we will always remember.  My family hadn't all been together my parents me and my 3 brothers and families for 2 years.  It was so nice to be together.  It was actually emotional leaving knowing what amazing memories we made and not knowing when the next time we will all be together again.  Way to go "Team Awesome"!