Schmidt Family Reunion 2008

This post will have quite a few pictures, I actually remembered to take my camera out of the case and take a some candid shots. Some of these are also from my sister Lindsay's archive. So Thursday morning we all, (three vans full of Schmidt's) caravaned from Utah to Sacramento area, California. In the lead was my dad's beast of a van that we all have fond memories of taking looooooooong family road trips, usually cuz we were moving. This van is was bought back in 1991 right before we moved to Oregon and has gone through a lot of fixing up. I swear, every time we drove to CA to visit my grandparents, we would usually get stuck cuz something went wrong with the van, and then end up going back to grandma's for another night. My grandma got used to it and never changed the sheets until she got a call from us AFTER we returned home. Good times . . Here is McKenzie and Kyra being ducks in my dads van fully equipped with a 13 Inch TV/DVD players that sits on top of out huge cooler. Ahh memories, only back then we did not have the luxury of having a movie to watch, we had to entertain ourselves with books, music, fighting, asking incessantly are we there yet and begging for a drink of water to whomever was sitting on the front bench. Lindsay and her boys rode with my dad, Shauna had her minivan with her kids and Jon and then in my van (I was Randyless) my mom and 3 of my 4 kids (remember Morgie was with Lolly), rode with me. Oh yeah, so Randy had just started his second session of summer semester the day after the wedding and knew that he wouldn't be able to go with us, so he scheduled to take his GRE test that weekend. He had been taking a test prep class for the past 7-8 weeks to get ready for it, since he hates testing, me too.

Oh and did I mention that we had to follow behind dad at 67 miles per hour, because the van is soo old, dad wanted to make sure he got there in one piece and noticed that every time we went over 70 is when the van would break down quicker. So Shauna and I decided to follow him, just in case something did go wrong. Oh and Shauna's baby Ella barfed the night before (of course she did, why not, every other baby had gotten sick, she felt it was her turn). So we had to stop a few times to change the lovely diapers and puking baby. Gotta love road trips.

So we get there late Thursday night (a 12-13 hour trip took more like 14-15) and slept and the next day hung out with our cousins and such.

This is my cousin Sara, (she's Lindsay's age) and her youngest Zane, he loved getting into things, it was a fun to watch him.
Billy with 3 of the 5 babies, I had to laugh cuz Malia is looking at Bradley like, what is up with you, this is fun.
This is our 2nd cousin Lenora and her two girls Tianna and Meli. They are Polynesian dancers, and every year they preform and attempt to teach us how to dance. The kids love it, and the adults just laugh at our sad attempts to be limber.
Billy, Micah and Jon doing the boys part of the dancing.
Morgan and Jon enjoying the Cali heat , or something like that.
Sara's oldest, Willow and Meli splashing in the water, kinda looks like Meli is going to do a water attack.
Morgan got up there right away to dance, but as soon as they got started she became shy and decided she didn't want to do it anymore. So I attempted to move her hips for her, we had a good laugh
Andy holding Collin, Polynesian dancing. There weren't enough sarongs for everyone so Lenora gave her feather boa she was wearing around Andy. Isn't he cute, ha ha ha ha. Come on Andy shake your thang.
This is the drive home on Sunday, Malia all Tucker'd out. The funny thing is something startled her awake in the car and she immediately fell back asleep with her head propped up, hysterical. All in all it was a fun/fast trip, and I'm glad it's over, not the part of being able to see everyone, but the part of driving without Randy, I HATE DRIVING, that's why I married Randy.