Family Reunion

The weekend near July 24th has been a long standing date for the Allen Family Reunion. It is a time for eating, playing and good ol' fashioned family bonding! Everyone who can, heads to Island Park and brings their families and gear and secret dutch oven recipes! It has been many years since all of us were able to attend. Not all of our children were able to make it, but the 10 of us were there. It was amazing! Living in Alaska for so long, we were not able to attend most of the reunions. It is so fun to live close enough to be able to go. Linda lives in Oklahoma and so she doesn't usually make it either. I am so glad that we were both able to be there this year!!

Here we are posing with Mom and Dad. Aren't we adorable?? Can you tell who's oldest??

Mom and Dad and the boys! These are some pretty amazing specimens of manhood! My brothers are awesome! No girl could ask for better! They are all great husbands and fathers! Love ya, Bro's!
Sisters, Sisters, never were there such devoted sisters!! My Mom took me aside and told me how proud she is of her daughters. She had been watching us and realized that she raised some pretty awesome daughters. She's right, my sisters are pretty special!! Beautiful too!!

Here's the grand and great grandkids that were there on Saturday. This is not all by a long shot! I think I counted wrong for an earlier post. I think there are 46 grandchildren and I forget how many greats. I had 2 of my kids, Emily and Luke there and Emily's three kids. Nathan, Smokie's baby was only about 10 days old.

It is a tradition to float the river each year. We usually do it in two trips because there are so many of us, but this year we really tried to get enough water crafts to do it in one trip. Here we are in the staging area at the beginning of the float. It took forever to get everyone jacketed up and into the water!!

Dad, Linda and Mike took all of the little girls and Sammy in the big raft. I think Tony was there helping them too. They had so much fun!

This is me in my kayak. I was nervous because there are rapids on the river and I have never navigated rapids in my kayak, but I did fine. Scott stayed with me through the first set and then turned me loose to do the rest. It was actually kind of fun to shoot the rapids, of course these were not too bad. I did swamp the kayak, but it was when I was trying to pull into the bank to pick some fireweed for TJ. (He wants to make some fireweed jelly.) I came in a wee bit too fast and went under. Thanks, Sean for coming to my rescue! I came out mostly unscathed. I have a few bruises on my wrist and elbow but that's pretty much it. (Well, there's a couple on my leg.)
Boys floatin' down the river.
Here's Dad checking out the karaoke. He didn't really get involved until Saturday night when he sang a tear jerking rendition of, "God Bless America." Nothing touches your heart more than a veteran singing the love of his country. Dad has a beautiful voice and I love to hear him sing. Of course, we grew up with him singing "After the Ball Was Over," "Let me Loose, Blubber," and "The Drinking Song." He didn't drink, he just loved to sing the song! He had a bunch of goofy songs he would sing for us!

Annette and Linda got the night going with their singing! They both have beautiful voices.


Mallory really loved the karaoke and loved getting up and singing with everyone. Saturday night she sang a solo of "I Am a Child of God."


This is just a random shot of the fam milling around. See the garbage can on the tripod? Paul cooked a turkey in there for dinner. Yum!

What a wonderful weekend! It was so fun to be together. We missed all those who weren't able to be there with us, but we know that we will have another reunion next year and another chance to get together. Love you family!!

Hairy Men

The other night I was talking to Ben and he was telling me how he is growing some facial hair. I'm sorry to say that I giggled. It is just too cute!! I have watched the boys trying to grow facial hair through the years and it is so fun to see how proud they get over their collections of hair. I was telling Aaron about Ben's announcement and he proudly showed me his current crop! Here are my 3 older son's (Luke hasn't got much of a contribution yet. I"ll have to take his picture under a magnifying glass to show you his fuzz!!) and their current hairy-ness!! All three pictures were taken in the last week.

This is the first time I have seen Ben with facial hair. He is right, he actually has a pretty good crop growing!! He will have to be shaving it off soon as the Hamm's are having family pictures done and I don't know if they encourage facial hair in medical school


I took this picture of Aaron on my cell phone so it's not the best quality. His hair is so light! There is actually quite a bit more there than it looks like here. Aaron takes after his Dad in that respect. He had a beautiful baby face for years and years after we were married.


Now, here's the beast!! Levi has been growing his out during every break from BYU for a few years and can really get a beard growing!! A couple of weeks ago, he was looking mighty shaggy, but he trimmed it and is now looking quite dapper! Working out in the hinterland of Alaska, it's easy to let your inner prospector out!!

I'm an Aunt.......................Again!!

On Monday, July 14th, Nathan Lee Bell joined our family. His mother, Norma, more affectionately known as Smokie, delivered him via c-section. This picture is of my little nephew hours after he was born.
Little Nathan is the 45th grandchild of my parents and my 38th nephew or niece on my side. Scott's siblings have 15 children between them and so that makes me the Aunt of 53!! Whoo Hooo!!
Here is Nathan at about a day old. I can't wait to snuggle him and kiss those chubby cheeks!!
This picture was taken today. Isn't Mallory a proud big sister?? Look at the feet on that little guy!!

There's something fishy about that!!

A couple of weeks ago we traveled down to Idaho to the Ekstrom family reunion. We went to Pebble Creek. It is a beautiful place near Lava Hot Springs. Scott's family has been camping there since he was a little boy, maybe longer. He has so many wonderful memories of different idyllic moments as a child. As we drove to find a campsite, he told me of the times they camped here, or here and who was there and how many fish he caught and what fun they had together! What a treasure trove of rich family moments!!

We had a great time together. I will post more pictures of the fam later. This post is dedicated to a special family bonding experience called fishing.

I've been fishing oodles of times and I enjoy it. The only problem is that I never catch anything. Scott has patiently explained the mechanics to me on several occasions and I think that I am pretty patient so I don't get it. Fish just avoid me!!

No so at this reunion! I skunked Scott one day and the next day I caught my limit in 20 minutes. All from the same hole!! Hurray for me!!

The pictures below are from the evening that we went fishing with Em and the kids. (When I skunked Scott!!) It was fun to watch the kids excitement and delight in the wonders of this exciting sport!!

Isaac and I are fishing under Scott's excellent tutelage. You can see Esther's little head between Scott and I.


Isaac fishing with Eve looking on. Isaac forgot his hat so I let him wear mine.


Here I am reeling in one of the 3 I caught that evening. Scott is looking incredulously on.


Esther even helped me catch one of the fish. Can you see it just coming up out of the water??


Isaac showing off our spoils!

OK, I'll admit it.................Washington IS beautiful

Having lived in The Great Land, Alaska, for so many years, I think that I have become a kind of scenery snob. What can I say, Alaska is just breathtaking! I think everywhere we went over the years was beautiful. Living at the foot of the mountains produced such a sense of security and permanence.

Since moving to Washington last year, I have really been missing the beauty and majesty. I am learning to love this area, but where are the mountains and sweet smell of forests and streams??

This weekend we decided to get out of the 100+ heat and see what we could see of this new state. We headed in whatever direction Yakima is. (I still haven't developed a sense of direction as you can see!) We passed Yakima and headed toward White Pass. It wasn't long before we began to leave the vineyards and orchards behind and the temperature dropped and we began to see the evergreens and smell the crisp air! Mountains!!! We found them!! We camped in a cozy campground in the Wenatchee National Forest, Indian Creek Campground, where we were able to unwind and soak in the essence of the forest and wild, untamed water. (Well, mostly untamed as the lake we kayaked in was between 2 dams.)

The best thing is that we realized that even though it's not our beloved Alaska, Washington is actually a beautiful place to live.

Luke opted to sleep in a hammock, rather than in a tent. Isn't this a pretty spot he chose??


The next pictures were taken at peril of my life from a moving kayak. Once I almost lost my paddle while trying to zoom in on the guys. It was a beautiful morning for being out on the lake. Not too hot and not too windy. (Of course, I did get an interesting sunburn on my legs. Just the part between my shorts and where they disappeared into the kayak.)

Saturday evening after we had biked and kayaked, we decided to go for a drive and see what there was to see. We found several interesting campgrounds that we plan to try and we happened upon this waterfall. I think it is above Clear Lake.


I don't remember the name of this waterfall. We were driving along and there was a scenic pull out so we pulled out to see the scene. It was breathtaking.

This is the river below the waterfall. The combination of mountain, valley and trees was beautiful!

On Memorial Day we decided to take the bikes and find Palouse Falls. It was a pretty dreadful drive through pretty boring, monotonous scenery, but we eventually found the falls. It was quite the oasis in the middle of rambling brush and scrub covered plateaus.



It was so hot there that poor Fitzwilliam overheated and had to spend some time panting under the truck. I wanted to get under there with him!! Thank goodness for air conditioning!!



The river below Palouse Falls.

Here is poor Fitz chillin' in the shade.