Family Reunion Preparations

Every 2 years the Gardner family does a reunion/vacation together.  Each year one of the siblings is responsible for planning and coordinating everything.  This year happened to be our turn.  Now, let me give you a little background.  Two years ago when we had our last one, we had 1 year old twins.  We were staying in a 3 story cabin, by a river, and traveling in a bus.  We had a great time, but the thought of us planning activities and cooking meals with the twins was too much.  That is the week we decided we were going to try to go to Aspen Grove Family Camp.  There they cook all the meals, have all your activities, even take the kids during the day to age grouped classes.  That sounded perfect to us.  So April of 2009 all the families had to agree to sign up and pay the fees that come with this and everyone did.  Family Camp then does a drawing of all the families that entered and we were lucky enough to get drawn.  I know some of my family think we wimped out, I say I outsmarted them.  Now the only thing we needed to really worry about was a gift of some kind for everyone.  That is not a given, but it is what we wanted to do.  We thought about many different things, but came to the conclusion that water bottles would be awesome since you would need one at camp anyway.  We bought the water bottles and then came up with a saying.  "The family that plays together, stays together."  We then stole an idea from my sister and put a number on each bottle of when you came into the family.  Dad is 1, Mom 2, etc.  They really turned out great.  We then also decided to do bandannas.  This was quite the fiasco.  We ordered them, only got half of them.  they then said they sent the rest, but didn't.  So with 5 days until we left and only half the bandannas and none embroidered, we didn't know what to do.  Mark called the company and stood firm that we wanted the bandannas the next day with no extra charge because it was there mistake.  They came!  Now the next problem.  A friend of ours was starting the embroider a saying on each of them.  Her machine broke and she was going out of town.  She was so kind and found 2 more people that were willing to help strangers the last 2 days we had before we left.  So, 2 days before we left we were running around Carson dropping of bandannas to ladies we don't even know.  The next day they were all done, and they turned out great.  Thank goodness for kind people.  Thank you Susanna for all your help with this.  We were now off for a great reunion at a great place.

These are all the water bottles with the saying and the numbers.

These are the bandannas that everyone got to wear during the family competitions at camp.