Moose Family Reunion

This week we took our last trip of the summer to Iowa for our first ever Moose Family Reunion! We had ONE day all summer where all of my siblings schedules aligned, and we took the opportunity.

We decided to drive out Thursday afternoon to space out the days we would be driving.  On Friday the kids played outside, we went on a walk, picked a HUGE bag of tomatoes from a neighbor, Emily watched Frozen, I worked on a sewing a dress for her, Andrew worked a bit, and we ran some errands.  The main attraction for the kids was turning on the music on a kids keyboard and dancing, singing, and conducting their way through the day.

When we told Nathan we were going to Grandpa and Grandma Moose’s he surprised us by saying, “Moose!”  The entire drive there he would say, “Moose?” anytime the car started slowing down or stopped at a stop light.  When we arrived he saw my mom and said, “Moose!” He used his latest vocabulary anytime he wanted to find her or saw her.  He also shocked us by looking at the picture above the bed in my old room where we sleep and saying, “temple”. His language development is taking off!

Derick and Brian arrived after we went to bed Friday night.  We started the reunion Saturday morning by taking family pictures at 8am.  We woke Emily up which created a little bit of frustration on her part, but both kids were good troopers.  The unfortunate part of the location was the millions of mosquitos that we were all being attacked by!  A friend came along to help take pictures for us which made everything go much more smoothly than setting up the tripod and it was a lot of fun.

Taking care of a mosquito.

Mosquitos!!!!

We went to a second location to snap a cornfield picture in our reunion shirts that Andrew designed.

When we got home Andrew and I set up a Harry Potter themed at home escape room.  One of our friends in Indiana created this amazing game and we were super excited to share it with my family.  It took them a little over an hour to solve the puzzles and they loved being part of the Hogwarts magic.  Emily jumped in and helped find things.  The highlight for her was being the one to remove the dragon from the golden egg.

Derick and I assembled sandwiches for lunch under the title of “Middle Kitchen Diner”, a throwback to our days of the “Back Seat Diner” making peanut butter sandwiches on cross country road trips.

As we finished up lunch, Grandpa Moose pulled out some incredible family history and told us about the Moose’s.

We all took naps, except Emily and Grandpa Moose who ran errands and worked on Uncle Derick’s car together.  As soon as were up we jumped into water games in the backyard.  The kids played in the pool and we played water balloon volleyball.

Everyone was starving and ready for dinner after being out in the hot sun.  We also celebrated Brian’s birthday, almost a month early, so we could enjoy an ice cream cake with bonfire candles.

The exhausted kids were quickly tucked into bed and everyone else watched “Gifted” and then chatted until way too late.  A wonderful first family reunion for the history books!