Family Reunion 1

For the first time in years the Stoddard family which is my mother-in-law side of the family got together for a family reunion. My husband has a really small family, only one cousin so we all keep in touch and know what's going on in each others lives pretty much, we just haven't been physically in the same place all at once for some time.

This was all made possible due to our dear aunt Mary who always goes above and beyond. She has a house in beautiful Lake Arrowhead, which is where Jon and I were married. We love it up there.

Well she invited us all to come up there for the 4th of July and there was no way we weren't going.

Everything looked perfect as it always does. The kids were all super spoiled by their Meme. There was 4th of July decorations all over the place. Honestly all looked beautiful.

We got there Monday night just in time to see Uncle Paul and Aunt Cheryl who Mookie loves to pieces.

We spend 4 days at the lake house. We went fishing, boating, sun bathing, playing in the sand box, doing arts and crafts with mom-mom, cooking, playing rummikub, talking, eating, swimming at a hotel pool, shopping, biking, going on walks and tons more stuff.

We didn't stop having fun the whole time we were there.

I loved having our cousin Huong cook for us every day. Honestly it was like having a personal chef with us. I'll clean any day as long as someone does the cooking. I need to live near her someday so I can just show up for dinner all the time, I told her I would clean her house as payment.

I learned to play rummikub and I am addicted so much fun but maybe the best part of it is getting to talk about life and parenting styles and just normal everyday things. I do love how we all kinda have similar styles of parenting.

Boating was another one of my favorite things we did. For the first time in over 6 years they got the speed boat out in the water and boy was I in love. I made Jon take me out for rides on the lake during sunset and I got some beautiful pictures an memories. We took my niece on a ride and t was the cutest thing. She kept on yelling "uncle Johnny is trying to kill us and I love it" since we were going pretty fast.

One morning we were all in the kitchen and Mookie goes to Jon "I'm going to bust you up" and out of no where one of his cousins says to Jon "imma cut you up" we died laughing. Jon said "I guess we know whose from Philly" really one of the funniest things I heard come from the children.

The 4th of July was pretty awesome but the best part was getting to watch the fireworks on the boat pretty close up. Funny thing is all the children fell asleep before they started and slept right through it. I told Mookie not to fall asleep or he would miss them and he said to me "if I miss them, I miss them" I laughed but he really slept right through it. They must've had a pretty amazingly exhausting day.

By Friday we started to get ready to head down the mountain and to the dessert to see our Meme who wast able to join us in the mountains. I don't think anyone wanted to leave and had Meme been up at the mountains with us we wouldn't have but we all wanted to see Meme.

Part 2 to come....