de Schweinitz family reunion, McCall, Idaho

What a joy to gather with family once again. We rented a large house on Cascade Lake near McCall, Idaho, 2+ hours from Boise. The four families drove 7-8 hours from Utah. 26 of us spent 5 days playing, talking, hiking, boating, eating, etc. Since it was July 4th, we wore red, white and blue for our family photo.

Carlstons: Julie, Phoebe,Peter, John, Luke, Stephanie and Elise

de Schweinitzes: Ben, Ming Lu, Cordelia, Rebecca,Peter, Miriam

Taylors: Kelly, Lucie, George, Andrew, Aaron, Emily, Ken

de Schweinitzes: Simon, Hannah, Marc, Evie, Fernanda, Nick

(we missed Anne de Schweinitz and Neil Chandler)

I flew to Boise and stayed overnight with dear friends Alec and Linda Andrus, former Palo Altans, who helped me shop for all the food and then generously drove me beside rushing rivers, on winding roads through beautiful landscape to the Tamarack house in Donnolly. We passed the new Meridian Idaho Temple.

At Cascade Lake we hiked, (Emily, Lucie and Kelly, below) went kayaking, paddle-boarding, and swimming, and rented a motor boat for water-skiing, tubing, wake-boarding for the brave and athletic!

 Aaron caught a large toad!

Kelly, Nick and Ming wearing the shirts I bought on Easter Island

 Fernanda on the knee board, Ben driving the boat. Luke raising the flag when someone was in the water

Boys in the boat; little girls ("the cupcakes") dance for us while we sang, directed by Peter); Rebecca celebrated her 50th birthday

 
Grammy with all but one of her grandchildren; with all but one of her children and their spouses above Cascade Lake on the Tamarack ski slope

Watching deer

Rebecca and I had dinner in McCall where we watched fireworks the next night and played at the Payette Lake beach the last day.

July Fourth we watched the Cascade Parade, filled with tractors, a log truck, veterans, firemen, horses, queens, vehicles of all kinds...not quite like any parade I've seen before...very rural! We got showered with water and candy!

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 And Marc found a beautiful skate park in McCall before the gorgeous fireworks and largest ice cream cones at Ice Cream Alley

I brought Andean ocarinas from Chile and was thrilled that Peter, Andrew and John were especially interested in actually playing beautiful tunes. The younger kids just liked to blow on them!

Our last evening the kids had a water balloon battle and then we had a talent show around the campfire...

and a skit narrated by the amazing storyteller Lucie, acted out by Taffy, Evie and Coco (the little girls also slept in the "theater")

What a great wild time we had. Family time is wonderful! 
Most of us stopped on the way back to Utah at Shoshone Falls near Twin Falls, Idaho, where we also watched lightning and some spectacular fires caused where it struck dry hills. Idaho is a beautiful state.

Back in Utah, we celebrated Evie's 6th birthday, I attended the gorgeous Payson Temple, where I did some ordinances for ancestors




had dinner with friends overlooking the Salt Lake Temple, visited the beautiful, historic Utah State capitol, with a great docent


watched Luke's team win a baseball game, visited the quarry where enormously heavy blocks of quartz monzonite were cut and transported to build the Salt Lake Temple. (and later the capitol, conference center and many other important buildings), What a remarkable feat!





On a very hot day we hiked to a lovely waterfall and then stopped twice at 7-11 mini-marts for free slurpies on 7/11 (July 11)!!


The only negatives of my trip were saying good-bye and losing my new phone with photos, contacts and new apps. Pray it will be found! Now I am home in Palo Alto, California, trying to recover from a great two weeks and plan the rest of my summer and plan for the future whatever that may bring.
I am truly blessed to have a loving, strong and fun family, to live in a beautiful free country (not perfect, but maybe we all need to work harder to make it so, to contribute our time, means and talents to preserve the principles upon which it was founded).