Lawsom Reunion

Ok, I am going to try to recap this past weekend without being totally long-winded. Dare to dream, Jess... dare to dream...

We set out thurdsay at a respectable 1:00 (ish), and with a couple of pit stops and 7 chapters of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince behind us, we arrived at Grayson Lake Boathouse Marina to visit Grandma Nadine and eat dinner. While it was very cool being on a boat house, it was easily the most nerve-wrecking thing I have done as a parent. Talk about danger at every corner! Poor boy, he didn't understand why everyone kept grabbing and yelling 'STOP!" Anyway, we headed over to Lazy Boy Farm after dinner and set up for the evening in this super-nice camper. Only problem: sleeping situation. Brandon and I had a choice between an uncomfortable double bed, or a comfortable (basically) twin sized bed that was made for children to sleep on. Its the one that the table converts into if you are familar with campers. Choosing comfort, we piled into easily the tiniest bed we have ever, and probably will ever sleep in. Being must barely short enough to fit if I slept with my feet straight up, I got a decent night's sleep. Brandon, being about 6 inches too tall, did not. It was a very comical situation, all in all, though.

The next day started off freakishly early since Jonas thought it would be a good idea for this trip to push his wake up time back to between 5:45 and 6:30. Not. Awesome. Anyway, pretty early morning made it bearable, at least. The morning started off with a bang because the farm bull, Robot, had escaped his pen and had to be gotten back in. No amount of coaxing seemed to work, but luckily, the cows wanted him back, so he just went back over. Everyone started arriving around noon, so it was good to see all the family again and meet all the new faces. That evening a bunch of us went to a disc golf course and played (or in mine and Amanda's case heclked), and it was surprisingly pleasant weather... can't complain there!

All the kids enjoyed playing in the yards, petting the horses, and watching the chickens and cows. I think they even got to help collect eggs the chickens layed-- and these eggs were cool-- they had green shells! Apparently the chickens were a special breed that layed colored eggs. Very neat-o. Brandon even collected an egg, although, he collected his in the morning, and there was a viscous chicken guarding it. If he had waited for evening, it would have been much easier (as he was told between peals of laughter later!).

July 4th was spent visiting most of the morning (and of course filling up on delicious country cookin') In the afternoon, a group of us went spelunking. I had never been before, but half the group had been and were excellent guides through the caves. There was one crawl through a very long tunnel that was maybe 2 feet high (smaller? I'm no good at estimating), then went through some very, very yucky mud that really made me feel adventureous... later we were told it was a level 3 crawl, which is like intermediate I guess... anyway. After exiting that cave, we went back in at the same entrance to a different part of the cave that had some cool caverns and other cave formations that were just amazing to see. When we got back to the bathrooms to change, I peeled off a full over-suit-thing and jeans under that, and I still had mud in my underwear! It was amazingly muddy, but oh so fun! All in all, spelunking trip #1 was pretty neat and I can now say that I have done it.

Sadly, after the adventure in the caves, it was raining, so no fireworks this year =(. After eating, a bunch of us stayed up and played a couple games of farkle. This was the turning point in the evening for my sanity at least. Luckily, it was in a very funny way, as I managed to accidentally call myself and Erin's husband inbred, and somehow there was horehound (dog prostitute?) candy involved... idk... it was a weird night-- but I enjoyed myself!

After packing up at grandma nadine's house (did I mention? after night 1 we decided to lodge elsewhere the remaining days) we headed back to say goodbye to everyone at the farm. Then it was a cool 8ish hours back home and another hour to unpack, but it's ok, because we got through another 6 chapters of harry potter (even if read by a weird british dude).

What with the visiting, spelunking, 4 wheeling, disc golfing, country cooking, fishing, tadpole oogling (there were some dang big tadpoles!!), corn-holeing, and lots of other stuff that happened this weekend, I can say we all had a load of fun-- when's the next reunion??