Uinta County Youth Camp
Our Whiting Family 2008 Reunion was a great time for everybody! In 2006, we met up with the Bentley cousins for a reunion at the Uinta County Youth Camp near Evanston, Wyoming.
Everybody had a great time so we decided to have our 2008 reunion there as well. There is a central large cabin with kitchen facilities and a large meeting/eating room. There is also a large central bathroom & shower cabin (ah, running water!). Then there are several little cabins with bunk beds in them. Each family had their own cabin, although some of the cousins bunked up together in their own cabin.Cameron & Micah wanted to work on their camping merit badge some more so they set up a tent on the grass near the large cabin and they slept out there with James and some of their brothers who thought they'd rather lay on the hard ground than sleep on a bouncy mattress in the cabin. They got rained on the 2nd night.
Some highlights from the trip were:
- a fun hike with Annie, Addie, and Hanah up the various trails in the mountains. We thought we would loop back into camp, but when it started looking like it was going to go over the other side of the mountain, we turned around and tried to retrace our steps. We did find camp, although we unintentionally took a different route.
- The first night we had a large Family Home Evening. Laura conducted and we got to enjoy such things as James wearing a swim suit on his head while leading us in the song, "Mickey Mouse Club" and some other fun reliving-of-memories from the Whiting clan. We had prepared
a skit to present the aprons as the 2008 souvenir. We added a few cousins in and the kids were "midgets" in a family home evening and even got to eat ice cream, which was pretty funny. - The 2nd night we had a talent show. Each family was supposed to contribute at least one item. I decided the easiest thing would be to just perform the songs we had performed at the Mother's Day party at church. We hadn't sung them for a couple months, so the week leading up to the reunion we practiced the songs each night. I remembered to pack their top hats, canes, vests,
etc. so they had costumes, but guess what I forgot to pack... my sheet music! We thought about just singing along to the cd, but that was disappointing after we'd been practicing all week. So we called Nat to see if she happened to have the sheet music to "Annie" and "Les Miserables." She didn't, so we turned to my mom for help. She ran to the music store and bought an "Annie" book. We decided that since they were only doing one Les Mis song, they could sing along with the cd for that. So we did have our music and things 
went as planned, except I was disappointed that so many of the keys didn't work on the piano. Oh well! Some of the other cousins did piano numbers, one showed butterflies, Liz did a pogo-stick rendition of the books in the Book of Mormon, and Andy & Annie's family did a funny skit. - One of the Bentley cousins was able to make it -- Sharon. She and her husband Matt and their 3 kids joined us and Matt was instantly the twins & Jamey's best friend as he taught them to fish. Even Teancum and Rebecca caught a fish! They spent quite a bit of time fishing and even ate the fish, although I abstained!
- Grandma rented canoes for a couple hours and the kids loved paddling around in the lake. Some of them fished, some of them had water fights, and some of them laid back and relaxed while other people rowed them around the lake. Lizzie even got in a canoe and loved it. She couldn't sit down in her life jacket so she just stood up and held onto the bar in the middle. She even held onto an oar for a while.
- The kids had fun making all kinds of crafts. Sharon, Natalie, and Annie all brought craft items for them to create a variety of things. Teancum made a shell man. Ian made some necklaces and bracelets. Cameron made several different things.
- Meal times were fun. We each had an assignment for a meal and they all went off without a hitch AND nobody got sick this year! Bonus!
- Grandpa and some of the cousins went to the dump to pick up all kinds of old bicycles and then they used their tools and great biking knowledge to put several "new" bikes together. They brought them to the reunion and we also brought a few of our bikes so the guys went on a few bike rides and the kids had fun riding bikes around the camp.
- Family Photos: We posed for a large family photo that Sharon & Matt took, and then Eric or Michelle took individual photos of each of the families. She had some trouble with her camera so I don't have those photos yet because she's going to fix the photos before she sends us a cd. She also took some photos of
James and I that turned out pretty funny. I took the photo of my kids on the log with my camera. We got some fun photos of Grandma with the girls and Grandpa with the boys also. Photos are my favorite thing. - Cousin Bonding Time! Rebecca and Heidi became inseparable. They also palled up with Angela quite a bit, as did Teancum. Teancum only wanted to talk about play station or the Yugio cards that someone had given him, so he looked for any friend that would "play" with him. The older boys bonded too and also had a couple sock wars, as well as lots of ping pong games.
- Sharon organized the Olympics and we even had a torch that the kids carried and lit the larger torch (flashlight) before the games started. Then we did a variety of games related to Olympic themes. Our team was the Wild Wyoming Whitings because we had Grandma & Grandpa Whiting on our team.
- We topped things off with bottle rocket shooting, of course.
1 comment:
Sounds like quite the adventure you had. Glad you all had fun!
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