Hopkinson Family Reunion

Surprise! I bet y'all thought I'd never blog again. Well I wondered myself if I'd ever get the motivation to catch up but we've seriously had such a fun and eventful year I just can't let it go undocumented.

So... here goes.

This summer we went to Bear Lake for Scott's family reunion. It was the perfect escape from the AZ heat and we couldn't believe how perfect the weather was...in July! This is everyone and I mean everyone. It was such a blessing that every person from that side of the family could make it. We got to see people that we haven't seen in years and I got to see people I'd never even met before.

We all took family pictures. This is one just of the cousins.

Except for a few people who stayed in a nearby cabin, this is where we all stayed. Pictures really don't do it justice. It is absolutely gorgeous and ginormous. It was so cool that we could all stay there because it gave us a chance to hang out all the time and get to know each other better. This is Scott's Aunt Royce and Uncle Scott's cabin in bear lake. They live here during the summers and were kind enough to accept Scott's invitation to host the whole family for a reunion. We seriously had the best time all thanks to them.

One of the many fun things to do at the cabin was zip lining. There was a more mellow line that even the kids could go down which was fun but then there was a much faster, adventurous one. One ride down the little one, I knew I had to do the big one. No one bothered to tell me that it still had some kinks to work out before I rode it but I'm not sure I would have listened. I was too excited. This picture is me when I took off...before I hit the end, banged my head, and sliced my ankle. It actually was really fun and fast and I would've done it tons of times had there not been multiple injuries on that thing. Now I have an awesome scar across my ankle to remind me how tough and adventurous I am. One day we went to the lake and just hung out.

We also went to some caves, which were pretty cool, but would've been a lot cooler had we not had to listen to the tour guides tell ridiculous stories about stalagmites look like the Grinch or the seven dwarfs when really there was just a green light shining on it or seven all in a row. But obviously I'm over it now and I just remember how cool it looked. I'm pretty sure this formation was called strawberry cause it's red, of course :)

We also got to go rafting the Snake River. It was probably the funnest and scariest thing I've done in a long time, or ever, maybe. I rafted the snake river when I was a teenager but I don't remember it being all that crazy. Apparently they had had a lot of rain so the water was really high which also means it's very fast with big rapids. Before we started we learned that LOTS of rafts had flipped already that morning. We weren't going with guides because Scott's uncle and cousin are experienced but I have to admit some of us were a little nervous about it. The raft in front of us, which had a guide, flipped on pretty much the first big rapid and I thought we were done for, but I was wrong. Our rafts were literally vertical and people were thrown on top of each other but despite the class V rapids and the fact that most of us were obviously inexperienced, neither raft flipped and no one fell out. We really could've used a GoPro (a video camera specifically made for capturing events just like that). We came back feeling like we could take on Godzilla himself...or someone big, mean, and scary anyway. Although we were pretty adventurous that day, I have to say the ones back at the cabin with all the kids had to be the bravest of us all. Here we are before we headed out.

Saturday was the "official family reunion." We played all sorts of games like donut on a string, 3-legged race, water balloon volleyball, who's that baby?, tug-o-war, water relay, and much more. It was a blast! I can't wait til we do it again someday.

It was brought to my attention that I forgot to mention a big part of the trip...the nightly game playing. We stayed up playing games every night and Mafia was pretty much the game of choice. I'm not certain who was pushing it multiple times EVERY SINGLE NIGHT or why we all agreed to it, but it always ended up being a good time. We learned a lot about each other playing that game :)