Reunion

Every year we go to the Bright Family Reunion. It is the one reunion we look forward to, and actually the only one we attend every year. This reunion is for the decendents of Hazen Wesley and Leah Merrill Bright. Their photos are the first two photos on the slide show above.

For decades we have been meeting one weekend a year and camping for a couple nights. The two most common locations for this reunion is Willow Flats Campground near Preston, Idaho, and the Malibu Campground in Logan Canyon.

Every year the group gets bigger and bigger. Some people are campers like us and others only come for Saturday and go home after dinner. It works no matter what you decide to do. When everyone is there the parking lot is completely packed. It's a challenge to find a parking space sometimes when you're the last ones to arrive! This year, for the first time, we were FIRST to arrive.

After we said goodbye to the Grubers at the Sunrise Campground, we headed into Logan for Linda to get online, to pick up a "few" groceries, and to wait out the storm. When we saw a break in the clouds we headed to the campground and set up camp. Later we returned to Logan for some rainy day activities.

First we visited the Logan temple grounds. My great great grandpa was the first Logan temple president, and my grandparents on my mom's side worked as officiaters there for several years. Grandpa was the only officiater over the age of 90 working at the temple. Grandma and Grandpa Housley's photos are also in the slide show above.



Later in the afternoon we found a cheap movie theater and watched a movie.



Logan Temple in the evening
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We camped in the Malibu Campground Wednesday and Thursday nights. Then it was time to move to the group site for the reunion. We just picked up the tents and walked them to the group site.








Moving the small stuff...



Hanging the tarp...again...







After the work was done, the kids tried drinking from the thermos without a cup.

Then we waited for people to arrive...

There's a baby moose in our camp!

This photo sums up Saturday...

My cousin, Sherwin saying, "BRRRR, IT'S COLD!"

It rained ALL day!

The afghan I made for the raffle

The doily I tatted for the raffle

I also knitted some crazy socks, but didn't get photos of them.

During the day Saturday, Tom decided he needed to go somewhere for some excitement (and warmth). I laughed to see 4 of my cousins directing him out of the parking lot!

Sunday we packed up to come home. This is a view of the temple as we came out of the canyon. Every time we visited our grandparents in Cache Valley while we were growing up my sister asked mom and dad to drive around the Logan temple on our way to their house (and on the way home, too).

There was one other memorable story from this trip. On the second day, Shellece's camera battery was dead so Linda and I kept taking photos and planned to send them to Shellece later. We mentioned that we should download them onto Linda's laptop at the end of our time together...that didn't happen. On Friday I was messing around with my camera and accidentally reformatted my memory card. Later that evening Linda was messing around with her camera and erased all her photos.

So how did we get so many photos?! I came home, found a recovery program I could use for free and managed to save most of the photos on Linda's card. Mine was hopeless. At least we ended up with a good selection of photos anyway! But lesson learned...never mess with your camera until all the photos are downloaded!

Caves and Springs

We did lots of exploring with the Grubers. The first photos are from the Paris Ice Cave. There is ice in it year round.


Tom and James slid down the snow you see in this photo.


The exit of the cave

Tim and James going to the mouth of the cave.

The exit is visible from the entrance. We could have spent hours at this cave climbing the rocks and exploring. It is not improved at all...it's just there in the rough.

Another place of exploration was Paris Springs. It was 300 yards from the Paris campground. That is a beautiful campground.

The Minnetonka Cave was a work out. 896 stairs round trip.

This is the bride and groom. The bride is above and the groom is below. I was told that the guide said when they get together they will be married...but in the meantime they are having a very long engagement.

The Seven Dwarf room and Casper the friendly ghost.

These are the "Stairway to Heaven"...71 steps. They went up them and then turned around to come back out of the cave.

St. Charles canyon

Tres amigas! Linda, Ann and Shellece

This is the back of the Paris Tabernacle. The guide told us that when they started putting the roof on they realized that the pitch of the roof was wrong on one side of the wall. Look closely and you can see a line just below the roof line on the right side of the photo. They had to add a bit to make the roof fit right. All the adults in our group looked at each other and said, "Tim Perry would have loved that story!"

Paris Tabernacle from the front. The ceiling in this building was made by a ship builder so it looks just like the inside of a boat, but turned upside down.

Next post...

Bright Family Reunion

Camping with the Grubers

This was our third year camping with the Grubers. They introduced us to Idaho by taking us to Baumgartener Campground and Grandjean Campground. So, this year since they moved to Utah we decided to introduce them to Utah just a bit, and we went to Bear Lake.

We didn't know we were going to be camping during one of the coldest, wettest June's in history.
We arrived Saturday to rain and freezing temperatures. We could see our breath in the air. Dinner took forever to cook because the cold ground just sucked the heat out of the charcoal. Also, we couldn't get a good fire going because all the wood was wet. We joked about going to Gruber's and camping at their new house. After that first night we figured out a few tricks and cooking time was cut dramatically, and we did manage to get a good fire or two going. Every day got a little better as far as weather was concerned until finally Tuesday was beautiful.


Apples to Apples was a huge hit in our campsite. The kids played that every chance they could.

Here's the whole group.

The Grubers

Here we are.

On Sunday we drove all the way around the lake.

We thought it would be too cold to swim. The kids thought otherwise. Here are Hannah and Aseana.

And here's James.

Playing in the sand.

Boys will be boys...Sean and Tom doing donuts on the beach

Sean and Shellece found lots of things for us to do that we had never known about. It was crazy that we had been going to Bear Lake our entire lives and never knew about caves and springs, etc. Bear Lake Hot Springs was one of those finds. I think we never knew about it because mom and dad were always vacationing on a shoe string and didn't want to pay for 9 kids to play in the hot springs when a perfectly good lake was available for only $4.

Tim, James and Gordon are playing ball.

Tim and Gordon

I'll add more later. Other finds were the Minnetonka Cave, the Paris Springs and Ice Cave, and the Paris Tabernacle. The week ended with the Bright Family Reunion. I have lots more to show you!

Short and sweet

well todays email is gonna be kinda short.im really glad you guys had a great trip. sounds like a lot of fun! work here is going well. luis was the one that called you. he and his wife are doing awesome!! we got them addicted to lds.org. its so sweet.everything here is fine.i just got a "dear john" from Jess. i cant say im not surprised but its still kinda a shock. im ok, just kinda.... i dunno. that changes a lot of things, which is fine, life changes. its just hard to get used to when it does.
ohh and im sorry i forgot about your birthday earlier this month. i love you mom. times just gone crazy on me and i never know what day it is i just know its racing as fast as it can to the 16th


Last week...

good to hear from you even if it was just a littleall is well here in Elwood (city (no arthur yet)) weve got a lot of sweet people we're working with!! the highlight is probably the sanmigel family. louise and Jennifer are doing awesome. this week we were able to point them towards baptism and so now were working on getting them smoke free etc. so they can be baptized! theyre a really great family.well im safe and happyill hear from ya laterlove yajohn


And from two weeks ago...

im having a pretty good week. weve been working hard and getting good work done. im glad to be here in Elwood, its an awesome little town. hopefully ill like rexburg like i do elwood. i loved that year after i graduated. it was awesome!! enjoy it while you can cuz pretty soon youll be goin to bed at 10:30 and arrising at 6:30 on your mission. i love ya buddy. thanks for writing me all the time.john
well i am now in a nice little town called Elwood. theres a sweet little branch here of about 80. im really glad to be here. theres a lot of great people and in the mean time we keep pretty busy too. we're working with quite a few people i guess the highlight of those is probably the sanmiguel family. the dad is our primary investigator there and his wife and kids are coming along as well. he seems to know that joseph smith is a prophet i think we'll be talking about baptism very very soon! theres been quite a few miracles here already and im glad that im here to finnish my mission off. sounds like all this foot and back stuff has been pretty crazy. ive been prayin for ya. ive got a doctors appointment coming up tomorrow for that bike wreck i was in in indy 1st. hopefully all will be well its been like 6 weeks since the wreck and it still hurts... well i love ya mom, have a great week!john

Graduation!

Tim's seminary graduation...four year seminary student

Isn't Hannah so cute in this photo?!

John's girlfriend, Jess also graduated. Here she is with her parents.


Tim crossing the stage.

The happy graduate!

Our family

I can't believe half our kids are now graduates from high school. Where did the time go? I'm so proud of Tim. School has always been a struggle for him, but he is so dedicated and never quits. He is looking forward to serving a mission next spring.