Hardy Highlights : *Colorado and White Family Reunion

We made it to Colorado on Saturday July 16. It was fun to see Nathan and Kyla together since they are so close in age. Grandpa Hardy hadn't been doing well and had been moved to a nursing home. The next day we went to go visit him after church. While we were there, we sang some songs in the common room for the other nursing home residents. It was hard to see Grandpa doing so poorly but I know the kids wanted to see him again. We knew he didn't have a lot of time left. I had thought I would take pictures of the kids with their Grandpa one last time, but he looked so different I just couldn't do it. I didn't want them to remember him sick like that.

Nate and Kyla

Cousins after singing at the nursing home

After visiting Grandpa in the nursing home, the White Family Reunion officially began with dinner and games at Uncle Dean's house. The kids played in his huge, beautiful yard for awhile. They especially enjoyed his swings. Then we played all sorts of different "Minute to Win It" games. Afterwards, the kids made a video called "St. John leaves St. Johns." Years ago, the cousins had made a video acting out this important story from their family history. So now we re-filmed it with this age group of young cousins. The story is about Daren's Grandpa White, Floyd White, when he was a baby. A brief version is that his parents lived in St. Johns, AZ and it was such a hard life, they and another family finally decided to leave. They started out travelling together but when the other family wanted to travel on the Sabbath, the Whites decided to stay behind to keep the Sabbath Day holy. So the families ended up travelling separately. The other family ended up having a bunch of hardships and the Whites ended up passing them and reaching their destination first. Nate got to play the part of baby Floyd. Too bad I can't put videos in the blog book because it was quite adorable.

Kelsey and Diana, unseperable.

Natalee enjoyed playing with these little tiny frogs.

Haylee, Caleb Fleming, and Kelsey in the canoe on Uncle Dean's pond.

Kelsey really liked the canoe!

Daren's cousin Valerie has a daughter named Jamie Hulen who makes awesome cakes. She made Julene's wedding cake and she made this cake for the family reunion. It has a flag to show where each person in the family is currently living.

Minute To Win It games!

Haylee and Spencer doing cup stacking.

Sadly, I don't know who all these kids are. But Mackenzie is in the bright blue trying to pull all the kleenex out of the box one at a time in under a minute.

She didn't quite finish within the minute deadline, but she was still excited she had accomplished the task!

Kelsey back in the canoe with cousin Grant Fleming.

Uncle John on the far right, trying to stack a certain number of cookies on his forehead. Sadly, I don't know the names of the other contenders.

And down came the oreos! (John Hardy)

Julene and John Kohls (Daren's cousin Carla's husband) trying to move an oreo from their forehead to their mouth without any hands.

Daren trying to get the oreo in his mouth with no hands too.

Baby "Floyd" finally tuckered out and fell asleep in the "wagon."

A favorite sight to see whenever we're in Colorado is the wild deer roaming around Grandma Bobbi's neighborhood. :)
There was an activity planned for each day of the White Familiy reunion, but not everybody went to every activity. Most of them were a little bit of a drive (about an hour or so) so we didn't feel like we could travel every day and have the kids enjoy it. It's always hard when you have little ones that still need their naps. We definitely wanted to make the trip to see the Box Canyon waterfall though. Daren had told me how beautiful it was. First we climbed up a metal walkway to get to the waterfall. It wasn't too far and it was such a cool site to see the waterfall coming down inside the canyon. Then we went back out and went up a trail to the top of the canyon. There was a bridge to cross and a little tunnel on the other side that you could go part way into. It was such a beautiful view on the bridge with a river down below.

Box Canyon/Black Canyon Trip: July 20, 2011

Box Canyon waterfall-the picture doesn't do it justice.

Diana and Kelsey, best cousins!

Another waterfall that we could see from the trail.

Nathan enjoyed riding in his little backpack.

Natalee and Kelsey

View from the bridge.

The kids inside the little tunnel.

Beautiful Colorado scenery.

Our next stop was a canyon called Black Canyon. I was slightly panicked that one of the kids was going to be risky and fall off the edge. But everyone managed to survive. :)