Tom Slack Family Reunion 8/2010 - Day 1

August was a good month for our family.  Kevin came home after being gone on RIMPAC for 2 months.  Soon after he got home, the kids and I were brave and ventured on an airplane to go to Indiana for the Tom Slack Family Reunion.  I was pretty worried about going on the plane by myself with my kids, but for the most part they were pretty good.  Garrett loved being on the airplane and kept saying "I like airplane...I like helicopter...I like space shuttle." (All of which were on his puzzle when he was little).  The kids were super good on the plane.  My only problems were with ignorant people like the lady in front of Garrett who kept telling me to make him stop kicking her chair even though I warned her ahead of time and tried my hardest to make him stop, or the flight attendants who offered to help me with Garrett when we got off the plane, and didn't hold his hand, so he would make a dash for the airport and I'd have to chase him down.  Let's just say it was a long day.  We left our house at 9 a.m. and got to Indianapolis at 11:30 p.m. where Aunt Marie was there to pick us up and take us to her house to stay overnight.  We had a great time catching up with her and her kids.
The next morning Michelle met us at Marie's house.  Marie was kind enough to let us borrow her van, so we headed out to the family reunion.  It was quite a long drive, complicated by a 2-hour stop at Wal-Mart for last-minute purchases, getting lost trying to find Arby's, passing the cabins and having to turn around.  We finally got to the cabins after everyone else had spent the day swimming in the lake.  I kind of went through a little panick attack when we got to the cabins and the first thing Garrett and Caiti wanted to do was go out in the pond, and I kept losing track of them.  So, we all hid in our bedroom for a while so I could get myself together and figure out safety issues.  Luckily, the kids could watch DVDs in our room, and they even had a fun visitor, their cousin Will.

Nicole and Jake got the family together for a very fun version of Minute to Win It with some super fun competitions.  The games that I participated in were "Junk in the Trunk" and "Suck it Up."  Not surprisingly, I lost both. 

Garrett was enjoying spending time with family he missed so much, and they got a good dose of Garrett  loving!

Jason would have none of the games...so he and Caiti went upstairs with a bunch of the younger cousins and nice Aunt Michelle and Uncle Robert who volunteered to watch them, and they all watched some Dora.

After the game, we were all blessed to sing a late Happy Birthday to my daddy who was in the ICU on his last birthday.  We were so glad to have him with us to celebrate this time.  We also had a good bonding moment singing our wonderful Slack Family song that my mom wrote when we were little and then Amy cowrote additional verses to fit our family dynamics now.  I loved it.  It was sure nice to spend time with our family!