The Merrill Family Reunion

A couple of weeks ago we headed up to the West Piney Girls Camp in Idaho for the Merrill family reunion. West Piney is between Swan Valley and Victor, ID. (I know that still doesn't help a lot of you.) It is really beautiful there and we had a great time. My Grandpa Merrill used to race horses and so my Aunt Janet who was in charge of the reunion this year decided to have a Kentucky Derby theme. We made big hats and raced stick horses. It was great to see everyone in their hats. I wish I had a picture of us in our hats, but unfortunately I don't. So instead I'll show you some of the other things we did:

This is a picture of my brother, Tyler on top of the slide. The cabin we stay at is on the top of a hill and so to get down to the baseball field and swing set they built a slide to make getting there quick and "fun". I think it is absolutely terrifying. In fact before someone goes down for the first time they get full intructions on how to go down this slide because doing it wrong would be disasterous. You must slide on a piece of carpet, and keep your arms and legs in. You CAN NOT touch the sides or you could end up flipping yourself end over end all the way down the hill. Seriously, this is the biggest slide I have ever seen. The pictures do not do it justice.
This is Tyler mid-way down the slide.

We really enjoy riding the four wheelers along the dirt roads. Annie kept asking us to go faster.
This is Nathen down in the ball fields below the cabin. you can kind of get an idea of how big the hill and the slide are.
My cousin, Justin brought his horses for us to ride. This is Annie and his daughter, Lily riding on Peach. She was a beautiful and very tame horse. Annie was excited to be able to ride a real horse.

The Noyes Family Reunion

Last weekend we headed up to the bustling metropolis of Clayton, Idaho for the Noyes family reunion. We camped out at the May Family Ranch with a bunch of Nathen's family. It was nice to be able to visit with them and enjoy fun games and good food. Annie's favorite part was playing with Elizabeth in the playhouse. She loves having people to play with. Nathen enjoyed the waterslide and playing volleyball. I had fun making some cute crafts and watching Nathen, Brett, David and Marianne literally hold our campsite together in a majorly windy downpour. Our tent started to blow away in the storm so Nathen dove in and held it down while the others raced to save the canopy. Luckily the storm was short lived and it really help to cool things down. We had a fun time and got to see some beautiful parts of Idaho.

"I don't like hiking, Daddy!"

So back in July we decided we would take Annie on a hike. We went to Mueller park in Bountiful and had a nice picnic then hiked up to Elephant Rock. It was a lot longer of a hike than I remembered and Annie made sure she let us know that it was a really long hike. She did really good though and hiked most of the way up all by herself. About half way through she told us she didn't like hiking and that maybe she would like it when she was a mommy. We eventually made it to the Rock, hurried and had our picture taken, then booked it back down the trail because it was starting to get dark. Annie did so good, but I think we have ruined hiking for her for quite some time.