Goates Reunion

This past weekend was so much fun. I got to meet the last few family members from Nick's Mom's side of the family at the Goates Family Reunion. We had a ton of fun. It started off Thursday with going to Cedar City. We all went out to eat and then Nick and I watched babies and hung out with two of the uncles while everyone else went to a play. This may shock some of you, but we aren't really big play/musical people so we really didn't mind missing out. (Yeah, I know I was in a play in high school... I have the dvd of it and still haven't even watched the one I was in myself... haha)

The next day we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel (and all the Goates relatives took up the entire breakfast area), then rounded everyone up to head down to my favorite Southern Utah Hike in Kanarraville. I recommended it to my mother in law another summer when they went down with some friends and they loved it too so she planned to go again with the whole family. It was a hit. It's an awesome hike because it's nice and cool. You walk through a creek most of the time and it's almost 100% shaded.

After the hike, we came back up to Cedar and ate lunch at my favorite place EVER, the Pastry Pub. Their bagels are so delicious and are ginormous. I got my favorite bagel sandwich and a slice of the infamous chocolate confusion cake. SO good. We ate in the car on the way back up.

The next day was family picture time. We took a huge picture with the 50 of us and it couldn't have been a better experience. It was amazing that the kids all sat still long enough to look at a camera for 10+ shots. We got ourselves a little family picture too, which we love! We came back down to Provo and hung out for the afternoon and had a nice BBQ evening ending with S'Mores.

This whole time I had been taking pictures and staying up late each night working on the Goates slideshow. People sent in pictures before they got in town so there were at least 400 pictures to pull from for it. For those of you who have been following me long enough, you might remember that I made a roommate slideshow video once upon a time. I don't know why, but I enjoy putting together slideshows just for fun. Even if it takes away a few hours of precious sleep time these days, I really enjoy it anyway.

Now to end with a few pictures & the 15 minute slideshow video.

This is right before the log ladder (you can kind of see it on the left of the pic).

So tired after the hike.

Our first nice looking family pic.

 Little cranky after sitting still for pictures so long.

All of the little girl cousins. I think this picture turned out way cute if I do say so myself. :)

 All the 2012 cousins. Youngest to oldest. It was so stinking cute. They were all awake at the same time looking around at all the moms and kicking their legs and swinging their arms around. If we had another camera around, I would've taken video instead. The pictures we got just don't even come close to the cuteness factor that was going on in person.

Harvey and his cousin Lizzie held hands.

 Then Lizzie wanted a taste of Harvey's arm. Harvey pretty much froze after that and stayed in that position with that face for the next few minutes. haha.

 The 2012 mommies with their babies.
Kait & Harvey - February, Kendra & Lizzie - March, Adreanne & Liam - May, Zoe & Finley - June

And just for fun, how they're related to us - Kendra is Nick's aunt. Adreanne is our sister in law, Zoe is Nick's cousin's wife. So we've got all of Harvey's cousin bases covered here in this pic. First cousin, First cousin once removed, and second cousins. 

Video time!