Family Reunion- Take Two

We left Adam's family reunion and drove directly to a family reunion for my side of the family.  My Dad has one sibling, Kathy, and about a year and a half ago our family and Kathy's family signed up for a week at Aspen Grove Family Camp.  Not every single member of both families was present, but we did have about 25 people in our family group.

The camp is set up to provide families a lot of time to do fun things together, but is also set up so that the kids have their own groups with peers their own age and 2 counselors (BYU students) who lead them in fun activities giving parents time to do things they wouldn't normally be able to do, i.e. attend lectures, participate in recreational activities, hike, relax, etc.  I didn't have to worry about planning, cooking or cleaning up after a meal for an entire week.  It was awesome.

The kids loved hanging out with their cousins.

Britton and Jenna loved their groups.  It took Korinne a little longer to warm up.

I went to a lot of the lectures, they were fascinating.  Adam opted for the inter-camp recreational tournaments.

Horseshoes

shuffleboard, badminton, racquetball, even paintball.

We were having a great time. . .

. . .right up until Tuesday night at 11:35 p.m.  That is the precise moment Korinne started throwing up.  At 3:30 a.m. we were up again with another episode.  We were staying in individual rustic cabins that shared a communal bathroom building out in the woods.  It was 3:30 a.m., yet the bathroom building was buzzing with activity.  That was my first indication that it wasn't just us and it wasn't just our extended family either.  Of the entire camp of 400+ people we figured about 80% got sick with the same nasty flu bug that spread like wildfire during our week there.  We had 25 in our group and only 2 didn't get sick (and one of those got sick when he got home!).  There wasn't a single family in the entire camp that wasn't affected.  To say it put a damper on our week is an understatement.  My brother got so sick that he had to go down to an Instacare for an IV. 

We did recover, mostly, but I must say that I'm not a fan of having everyone get sick during a family camp. My Uncle Brent summed it up perfectly, "At first you're afraid you're going to die, and then you're afraid you won't."  Since it was a 24 hour thing in most cases we were able to kind of get back on track for the final day of camp.

It was definitely a memorable experience that I'm sure we'll laugh about in the years to come.