Gathering 2010 Our second Gathering was amazing! I am so thankful to all of our friends and family that came to Tahoe to celebrate with us. There are thousands of pictures and a lot of journaling to share, so I’m just going to do a bit at a time. So here it is, Gathering Day 1&2.
The Gathering began with a four and a half hour drive to Tahoe. The plan was to drive as long as either Henry and Serenity were willing to sleep. Well, Henry decided that today was a great day for an epic nap. He slept more than three and a half hours!! We were all desperately in need of a bathroom break by then, so we stopped in Truckee just 20 minutes shy of the cabin at the Pizza Shack. It really was a shack, with what looked like ten garage sales worth of crazy items scattered around, and one lonely lady doing all the cooking. The food was good though, at least the fried stuff, and the junk kept the kids entertained =) Don, Alex and Alli were able to join us at the last minute, as the kids awesome adventure happened to land them in Cali at just the right moment. We also had Johnny, Judy, Jack, Patricia, Henry, Joyce, David, Adam, Eddie, Eric, Chrissie and Serenity. Quite a group!
That first night we played a lot of Dominion. Don says that Dominion is a great game to lose, it is fun building your deck no matter who wins. Jack demolished us all and has been dubbed the King of Warehouses. I am the Pirate Queen, and if you want to know what that means you’ll just have to play with us sometime ;)
Eddie brought all kinds of toys. It seemed like a lot, but I know it’s barely a tiny part of his entire toy collection. We had wii, x-box, and a lot of controllers I still don’t know how to use. Lots of Mario Party, some crazy zombie bunny game, a flying game that looked pretty serious, and many other fun things.
We had cake and pizza in honor of Jack’s birthday. =)
And then during the middle of the night, we hear a shriek…
Day 2: Frisbee, Volleyball, and Beach Alex, Johnny, Adam and Eric went to play Frisbee golf first thing in the morning. It was more challenging than expected, the first hole took 30 minutes… to find the discs! They didn’t find the map until they played volleyball that afternoon. Volleyball was a challenge because the net was gone… and it rained briefly. They persevered though with a rope from Eddie’s car as the net and played six games of 3 on 2.
While the Frisbee golfers were having fun on the course, as everyone else made their way upstairs for breakfast, I learned that the reason for the commotion was a mouse! And not just any mouse. I think this was about the cockiest mouse I have ever seen. A group of us were sitting having a conversation, and he comes to the top of the stairs and just watches us. Eventually he decides to head on into the laundry room, and spends the next 15 minutes popping in and out, right where we can see him! Eventually, Gavin (who is my personal hero for this) managed to catch him using a plastic tub. He put the lid on and we put it out on the patio until Eddie released him across the street later. The kids were thrilled by this. Serenity kept saying, the mouse says “SQUEEEEEEK” and Henry REALLY wanted to touch the mouse. They didn’t forget about the mouse either, for several days Serenity was squeaking and Henry was asking for the mouse.
I played a little cutthroat with Alli and Alex. We didn’t manage to finish the game, and I choose to blame the terrible pool cues instead of my lack of skill =) Later I saw Alli play by herself and she could be quite the hustler.
Serenity was wearing her new red dress on the beach, and when Daddy offered to wade in the water with her, she just kept walking and walking way out until she was soaked! She also loved climbing on this big rock and tossing baseball sized rocks in the water, to Eric’s amazement as they were quite large. Jack waded out with Henry too. I love their hats. Serenity’s sheep/kitty hat, Henry’s shark, and Jack’s pants.
