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.

The aftermath

The next morning we kinda just took it easy. Laurie and Jason packed up to leave earlier than the rest of us. They stayed at Lake Tahoe at their timeshare (which is about 45 min from where my grandma lives). Morgan was invited to go with them to hang out with Grace. The rest of us had to do some major laundry and packing to ready to leave for Cali the next day. While I was getting my fam ready, Randy and Shauna took the remaining kids to our local pool. It's a lot of fun, equipped with water slides, fountains, water tumblers and beach entry. I love those kinds of pools, all ages can play. Anyway, I couldn't go (due to the fact that we had no clean clothes or anything packed, but I know the kids had fun. This is a pic of the pool I found on there website, FYI don't try and find Waldo, he is not there.

Lindsay's wedding pics

These are pictures I downloaded from Lindsay, my ma and pa at the temple












Here is the reception spread. Don't those cakes look yummy?

So many decisions, so little time.













Me and Randy, doing what we do best, standing around, or something like that.

The Real Story (by Randy)

Being the editor of the blog;), there was a blog about the husbands not changing a dirty diaper, which has some inaccuracies in it. The time was 9pm and the wives said they would be home from the bridal shower at 8:30 (we, the husbands, know that when the sisters get together they normally give us a time when they will be home, but that typically is not when they return). We were getting restless for the wives to come home, so we made the call. When making a call to the wives, one needs to make sure that the information that is in the call, is very convincing and that it sounds like an emergency, or they will not come to the rescue. Hence the information in that blog post provided misinformation to the general public.

#6 The Wodding (as my mom would say)

Where do I begin. We obviously all woke up early to get ready in time to be up to the temple by 10:30 am. Alina made hair appointments for my mom, her and a few other people, my mom looked really cute, they trimmed it and gave her big curls. Alina's hair was done up fancy, I loved it. Anyway, I had found a few people in my ward to help watch all the kiddos while we were in the temple. I figured it would be hard for a). Jon and James to handle 13 kids at the temple (5 of which are babies) and b). I would no longer have friends in my ward if I dumped all 13 off at someones house. So I got smart and had a few lined up, trying as best to split the babies up. Poor Bradley was still sick at this point and diarrhea had set in at this point, so I had someone with no kids come to my house to watch him and Collin. We got to the temple on time but the bride and groom were a little late getting there. It was a great ceremony, we were able to see some old friends from when we lived in Montana (they've come to I think almost all the Schmidt weddings so far, what great friends). After the sealing we took a few pictures and then booked it over to the church to set up table and chairs and get the last minute food preparations done.
This is a pic of Billy (I mean Will I will never be able to say his name) and his new bride Alina (or my new SIL) at the luncheon. Aren't they sweet. The food was yummy and we had a good number show up. We bought I think the right amount of food. Nothing ran out but it wasn't like we had a ton of leftovers. Enough to feed the troops at my house a few more days. After the luncheon Randy took our kids home to get naps/quiet time, while a few of us cleaned up.







We were home for maybe 1-2 hours, enough time for naps and teaching some of my family Ticket to Ride, (which we love btw) and then realizing we had to hurry and get our dress clothes back on for the reception. Alina and Billy wanted us there early to get family shots taken, since we didn't do them at the temple. We decided to not do them there, otherwise the kids were going to be in their white dresses and shirts while being babysat and then someone rushing down to get them and bring them all the back up. It just didn't seem that fun to me. However I didn't get any pics of my kids in their cute clothes, I'll tell you why in a sec. Alina said she'd send me some when they got them back, so that will have to be a later post. Anyway, the reception was beautiful. It was at an old house in Provo with a gorgeous set up. Oh and did I mention that Alina's twin sister made her dress for her? She's going into fashion design and heading to Italy pretty soon. It is beautiful gown.


At the reception there were an assortment of different cakes. I don't know the name of any of them but holy cow there had to have been about 15 different desserts, each one looked irresistibly good. I had two pieces and wanted more but just couldn't eat another bite. I wish I had gotten a picture of it, maybe Billy and Alina's photographer did, I'll cross my fingers. This is a pic of Laurie and her youngest Tate, (he's about a month younger than Malia) he wanted some dessert to, what a mean momma, hee hee.













-K- so the reason I didn't get shots of my kids in their nice clothes was because Randy and my BIL Jason went to go decorate Billy's car and took the camera so he could take pictures. So my sisters if you have pics you wanna send me, feel free. The reason why he had to take pics of it was because Billy had to go hide his car from Alina's family. Apparently in the past they have done some pretty crazy things to family members cars during the reception, like taking the wheels off, filling them with saw dust, putting the car up on blocks. Randy had to pick him up from his hiding place so he knew where the car was parked and we couldn't have let them leave with out it being decorated somehow. Randy and Jason wrote on the windows, "I am the ball" "I am the chain" "We love marriage" "Kids welcome" and my personal favorite "Doin Da Laundry" (it's an inside family joke for a little hanky panky), don't even ask how that got started.

#5 The calm before the storm

I don't have any pictures to share for this post, because we were running around before the wedding. Monday morning I woke up to the sounds of a baby crying (not my own mind you). Apparently Lindsay's baby, Bradley woke up barfing everywhere, (of course, why wouldn't he). I felt so bad, I just kept thinking, apparently I didn't bleach the house well enough before everyone came. I swear, it doesn't matter how much I clean, they still get sick. We got up early that morning because we "kidnapped" (she knew about it beforehand) Alina and took her out to breakfast, since some of the fam was not able to go to her bridal shower. We thought it would be a good way to get to know her a little better before the big day. We were even able to get her mom to come with us to. We went to Maglebye's Fresh, it was sooo good. They make their own syrup, it wasn't maple but it was yummy.

Next we came home and got ready to go to the park. My sisters have all lived here at one point of there lives and so they have friends that they wanted to see. So they invited their friends to a local park so the kids could play and the moms could visit.

After that I had to take my mom Costco shopping (they don't have Costco's in Michigan. . . yet) for the food we were preparing for the luncheon after the wedding. We made it simple and just did dinner roll sandwiches and my sister's and I were each in charge of a making a different salad. So, rest of the day was getting the food put together, and made, and then taken to the church to store in the fridge, since my fridge would not hold every one's stuff. That pretty much took up the rest of the day, we tried to get to bed early so we'd be rested, HA, whatever .


UPDATE- Here are some pics my sis took at the breakfast. It was fun. Here is Alina and her mom. Then Lindz and I sleeping, me apparently more than Lindz .

Then my mom, Bonnie Jean and Shauna

#4 church and birthday barbeque

On we go. So Sunday was Father's day. The kids helped me make egg mcmuffins (I don't know what else to call them), and the kids made Randy cards from old cards I have saved. They had fun. The rest of the day was consumed with getting ready and out the door for church, well most of us, (Laurie went to her old ward in Lehi, and Andy got lost so he went somewhere else). After church we made dinner. We all decided (well at least the girls did) that we would take a night of cooking dinner since there were about 27 of us and that's a lot of mouths to feed. My mom and I took Sunday and did a B-Bque. James's bday was Saturday and since that day was pretty busy we decided to celebrate it Sunday, along with Father's Day. We got them an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen and wrote on it " Happy everything day." It was fun, I still can't believe that we fit everyone into our house for dinner, we borrowed some chairs and a long table from neighbors and made it work.

The 1st pic is of my SILs (Andy's wife Bonnie Jean and Alina) This is Bradley and Andy's baby AJ.


This is me, Lindsay and my oldest sister Shauna.





And here is Micah with his cheesy smile enjoying his watermelon.
And then there is Andy licking me. Lindz was taking pictures of everyone and we decided to stick our tounges out and just as she took the shot, Andy turned and licked me. Gotta love the expression.