Crashing the Christensen Reunion

Have you ever wanted to just drop in on someone else's family reunion? Well, that's what we did on the next leg of our trip. I have two great friends from the Boise area - some brothers that I went to Ricks with 15 years ago (I'm old). I became friends with their whole family and had planned to stop in and see their parents on the way through. As it turned out, though, they were having their family reunion and were kind enough to let us join them. They have five kids and fourteen grandkids age nine and under, so it was quite the party. We had planned on just staying one night, but it turned into two nights and was a ton of fun! Here is a picture of me with my friends Lee and Dee Christensen:

We missed out on the first day of the reunion (which was water skiing--bummer), but we had tons of fun with them on their second day. It started out with swimming in a creek by their Grandpa's ranch. Here is a picture of Morgan and Brynne with Gayle (Dee & Lee's awesome mother!) and two of the Christensen grandkids.
The girls got to do a fair share of 4-wheeling during the day. The first time was down to the creek. Then they took the 4-wheelers up the creek and let the kids float down a small section. Brynne refused to ride anywhere other than right behind the driver where she could hold on tight -- good girl, Brynne. In this picture, they were getting ready to drive up the creek with Dee for their first of several rafting trips:
And here they are coming down the river with one of Dee's sons.
It was really nice of them to give my kids turns on the rafts and such when they had so many kids of their own waiting for turns. When it wasn't their turn to be on rafts, my kids discovered the fine art of floating downstream with a life jacket. Morgan even talked my friend Dee into going further up the river with her to float down a longer distance. (The water was never much deeper than my knees, so it was perfect if they held their bums up.) Here's Brynne floating down:
When we got done playing in the creek, we drove up to their ranch (which is in Sweet, ID somewhere between Boise and McCall). This is the only picture I have with me in it during the festivities. (We went in the barn for some singing and barn dancing just before heading home at the end of the day.)

They had a much, much smaller creek up at the ranch that Brynne played in for a good four hours or more.
The girls also got a chance to ride on some horses, do some more 4-wheeling, and ride a zip line. Morgan actually spent most of her time riding a bicycle they had up there. I wish I had a picture of that, because she seriously rode that bike for several hours. I think Morgan would have loved to spend more time on the horse (below), but rather than keep waiting for turns she busied herself with the bike. The funny part is that Morgan kept her swimming suit on the entire time and never wanted to put clothes on over it.
Here is Brynne getting ready to ride down the zip line. She was very scared of it but went down three or four times. I was very proud of Brynne trying all the new things even if they seemed a bit scary -- that was really good for her. Behind Brynne in this picture is brother Keeper (who was turning 12 when I met him and is somehow not a dad) and brother-in-law Jarett.
And here's Morgan riding down the zip line. She loved it and had no fear.
We had a hot dog roast for dinner and had a wonderful day. We didn't get back to the house where we all were staying until 10:15 pm. The kids were more dirty than I ever remember them being before, but we were so tired that all I could do was wash their faces and feet and put them to bed.

As a side note: The only other time I had been to their ranch was during the summer after our year at Ricks. My roommate Christine and I had gone to see them. They took us horseback riding up at the ranch. Neither Christine nor I had been riding by ourselves before, but they took us out "Man From Stormy River" style -- where we were riding almost straight down hillsides. I also remember running with the horse and trying not to bounce. Anyway, then we went water skiing for the first time before sitting still to watch a rodeo. While sitting at the rodeo, we decided to drive to our friend's mission reunion in Portland. The reunion was the next morning, so we went back to the Christensen home to ask their parents' permission to get in their tiny Geo Metro to drive all night to Portland. There were five of us (Dee, Lee, Andy, Christine, and me) in the tiny car. Considering that we had just had a full day of using our muscles we were REALLY sore. It was quite the site, I'm sure, watching us all get out of the car when we would switch drivers and fill up for gas. Fun memories...