Nate and Bethany: Smith Reunion 2015

This year was the Dale/Margaret Smith reunion and everyone headed to Twisp, WA. Margaret found this amazing house that would fit all 26 of us. The house was very accommodating and there was plenty of space. It had a lot of property to play on and it is right by a river. The house was very eccentric and was like a maze and very fun to explore.

Day 1: We all arrived and did a lot of exploring of the house and the property. We enjoyed sitting and visiting with each other and settled into "our" house.

Nate found the cowboy hat and so he put it on his dad's head. I love this picture because it shows Margaret's reaction to him.

Exploring all the land around us and down to the river.

Jake and Sam had fishing poles and Paige wanted to go fishing too.

"Our house is the red one." (Paige)

Day Two: Lots of fun times with cousins, floated down the river after lunch (Paige went with Anna and Margaret and met us at the end), went swimming at a local swimming pool, watching Nona fly her kite, and more river exploration.

This tramp got lots of use while we were here.

The house had a hot tub inside the house and it was a pretty big hit too.

After most of us floated down the river everyone went to the swimming pool. Paige and Carly had a lot of fun at the pool. They just followed each other around and would copy each other. It was so cute to watch.

This staircase became the perfect place for the kids to eat.

Dale, Aaron, and Mike decided that they wanted to float down the river later in the evening so Nate, Paige, and I went and watched them float down and enjoy the beautiful scenery for awhile.

We saw a snake carrying a fish in its mouth but I guess we scared the snake and it let go of the fish so Nate grabbed the fish and I took this lovely picture. :)

Beautiful view.

Day Three: More cousin fun/game playing, went to Winthrop, floated down the river again, sponge water fight, family photos, watched the boys play some football keep away, parachute fun, and root beer taste testing.

These swinging beds were awesome.

Aaron on the trampoline.

Winthrop is a little tourist/Western type of town and had this cool museum with a lot of history items from the town.

Oneil and his "broom" on his head.

The whole group getting ready to head down the river.

For this time going down I went in the raft so that Paige would go down so I also had Carly and Oneil with me too. They did very good even though I got stuck a lot and it was very cute whenever there were some rapids Paige would hold onto Carly's life jacket and she kept on saying to her "It's okay Carly." She will be a great big sister one day.

Margaret brought a whole bunch of colorful sponges and the kids put them together and it turned out to be a great water sponge fight that lasted longer than water balloons and you don't have to pick up all the little pieces like in a water balloon fight.

The kids also had lots of fun with the bottle rocket.

Dinner on the stairs.

The four girl cousins- next time around there will be 6. Yay for girls!

The family photos.

The whole crew! I married into an amazing family!

A little football fun.

We all had lots of fun doing a few different parachute games.

This was a fun game that I had never heard of before. You have one cat on top and then two mice crawling around under the parachute while everyone else shakes the parachute which makes it hard for the cat to see where the mice are.

After most of the kids were in bed the adults tasted some new root beers.

Day Four: Jump roping, cleaning and packing up, a few more family pictures, of course more cousin fun, and saying our goodbyes. :(

Paige had fun doing the snake with the jump rope. She even got pretty good at swinging the jump rope for others to jump in.

According to Rachel's Instagram post on the jump rope fun: "I jumped the double dutch and peed my pants. Thank you children of mine." Here is proof of that. :)