A Challenging Family Reunion Weekend

We had our annual family reunion weekend last week when Kevin and Keng and Owen come in from California and we head up north to Grand View Lodge on Gull Lake.  This year, it was a bit (OK, more than a bit) of a disaster.  I will explain later...

Before the trip, the kids were excited to learn how to play Mexican Train Dominos.  We used to play it as a family when we'd get together (though less so in recent years since the kids have all been born).  We thought we may want to play it on the trip, so I taught the big kids how to play.  They had a blast and have been wanting to play all the time!

 Trevor has been making "T for Trevor" out of blocks and was excited to show me this one!

On Friday, the Kevin, Keng, and Owen had arrived in town and Trevor and Owen got to go to a preschool activity through the Shakopee Parks and Rec called the "Superhero Challenge."  They got to go dressed as a superhero and do fun activities in that theme.  Trevor wore his Captain America costume from last Halloween and Owen was sporting his Superman T-shirt.

The first activity was "Catch the Villian" and the kids got to run around with hula hoops and catch the staff with the hoops to get candy prizes.

Next they got to do a relay in which they transported "Kryptonite" to a bucket using a cup to scoop it up and carry it.

They climbed through a "Laser Maze".

 And threw bean bags at villains.

They tested their "X-ray vision" by putting their hand into a bag and trying to guess what item was in the bag without looking.

Owen was ready to play at the playground by then, but Trevor stayed and had fun making a superhero mask.  He preferred wearing this one instead of the one that actually came with his costume.

Then it was back to the obstacle course...

leaping from roof to roof over tall buildings.

 The laser maze.

We had some fun playtime at the playground afterward and then headed home for lunch.  After lunch, we played in the playroom for a bit and Owen made a huge tower/robot out of cardboard blocks.

After nap time, we headed to Michelle and Brian's house for dinner before taking family photos near there.  Unfortunately, Nanny wasn't feeling well and threw up before heading to photos.  Photos went well and we have gotten 2 sneak peaks which are adorable!  Can't wait to see the rest!

Saturday morning, everybody but our crew headed up north to Grand View Lodge.  We headed up a little later in the afternoon after Austin's soccer tryouts.  We arrived around 6pm and hung around playing board games with Nanny until the rest of the family returned from the pool (the KBs) and the boat (Chesters and Grandpa).

We had dinner, put the kids to bed, hung out for a while, then went to sleep.

On Sunday morning, we learned that Kevin, Keng, and Owen were leaving to go home early.  Michelle and Theo had hand foot and mouth the previous weekend/week and it apparently freaked Keng out enough that she wouldn't let Owen anywhere near us and they left abruptly about 24 hours after arriving by taking a shuttle to Brainerd, flying to MSP and then home to California.  The whole point of this yearly reunion trip is to see them and it is the only few days of the year that we typically get to see them, so this was quite devastating to all of us. 

As if that wasn't a terrible enough way to start out the day, the trouble just kept coming.  We managed to squeeze some fun in, but it seemed like one thing after another went wrong!  The weather was chilly and very windy on Sunday morning, so the water was too choppy to take the jet ski we had rented out on the water or get the boat out.  We took that time to enjoy the indoor pool with the waterslide and fun water features.

After some time at the pool, we had lunch at the pub restaurant and then decided to give the boat and jet ski a try on a calmer bay up the road.  Brian had gone with Grandpa in the morning to pick up the jet ski we rented and then beached it at the resort while we were at the pool and lunch.  He rode it back to the launch spot where Grandpa drove the boat to launch it.  We all drove over to get on at the launch near the calm bay instead of having the boat come to the resort where the water was still choppy.  After arriving at the launch, Steve and Trevor hopped on the jet ski and drove it around the bay while we launched the boat.

Theo fell asleep on the 3 minute drive to the launch.

Here's where the trouble comes in...
After launching the boat and pushing it away from the dock, we realized that the propellor wasn't working.  The boat had hit something with the propellor the night before and Grandpa and Brian had put a new propellor on after that.  Unfortunately, the propellor wasn't put on correctly, so it didn't work and the boat couldn't go anywhere!  We drifted toward the lily pads and weeds until we got Steve to bring the jet ski over and tug us bit by bit back over to the dock so we could hold on and try to fix the propellor.  However, to do so, the jet ski had to get too close to the weeds at the edge of the launch and the jet ski stopped working (and started smoking!).  The boat wouldn't go and the jet ski wouldn't go.  Great!  Grandpa called the guy we rented the jet ski from while Brian tried to pull weeds out of the bottom of the jet ski.

Meanwhile, the kids all hung out on the boat (that wasn't going anywhere). 

Unfortunately, while we were trying to work on the jet ski, Sarah started not feeling well and was trying to throw up over the edge of the boat.  She didn't end up throwing up and by the time we got moving again, she was fine.  You can see her not looking so happy in the photo above (while holding a bag to throw up in).

Trevor had fun driving the (unmoving) boat.

Eventually, the jet ski guy came and picked up the jet ski.  He said it got sand in it when we beached it that morning, plus the weeds got in it before it stopped working. After that, Brian got down behind the boat and tightened up the prop and it worked!

We drove out of the launch bay and under a bridge, all in a no wake zone.  As soon as we got past the no wake zone, the propellor stopped working again!  We had to flag someone down and he nicely towed us back through the no wake zone to the boat launch again.  We got everybody off the boat, took the kids back to the cabin, and left Nanny, Grandpa, and Brian to get the boat out of the water.

We got everybody back to the cabin and headed to a yummy dinner at the Italian restaurant on the lodge property.  The restaurant is made from an old house and has a gorgeous big backyard that the kids enjoyed until dinner came and when they were done eating.

After dinner, we headed back to the cabin and got the fire going for some s'mores!  The kids had been looking forward to s'mores for weeks and were very happy to roast the marshmallows for everybody and eat plenty of s'mores themselves!

We got the kids to bed and sat around the fire for a while thinking about how we were more than happy to put this crazy day behind us.  Unfortunately, the day's surprises were not over yet.  Sarah came to the window and Steve went up to the door to check on her and discovered that she had vomited all over the air bed we brought for her to sleep on, the sheets, her blanket, AND her Grumpy Bear!!  I got her in the shower to clean the vomit out of her hair and off her face and body while Steve cleaned the carpet and stripped the bed.  The cabin had a beautiful front loader washer and dryer, but we had no laundry detergent, so we called the front desk to see if they had laundry detergent (it was about 11:30 pm, so there really wasn't another option to get it).  They did and sent someone to the cabin to bring it to us (about an hour or so later).  I ran the sheets through a rinse cycle while we waited for the detergent, then put the detergent in the machine when it arrived.  I realized after pouring it in the machine that it was not the right kind of detergent.  The washer had a sign that it could only use HE (high efficiency) detergent and this was regular detergent.  Arrrgh!  Luckily, when I put the detergent in, it was a removable cup in the machine, so I was able to get the detergent out without it going into the machine.  However, it left us with smelly, vomit laden sheets that were now wet!  I got a garbage bag from the maintenance crew the next morning and brought them home to wash them.  We finally got Sarah to bed in our bed and sent Steve down the hall to sleep in the now-empty bed in Kevin and Keng's room.  He then was up in the middle of the night sick as well!

Monday morning, we got up and enjoyed a nice buffet breakfast and Austin beat Nanny in a game of giant checkers in the lodge lobby.

We then went back to the cabins and packed up and loaded the cars so we could check out on time. Grandpa caught a cute photo of Trevor with his "pirate ship" (a rock in front of the cabin that he has deemed his ship).  He would climb up on the rock and exclaim, "We be sinkin'!"  "Abandon ship!" "Arr, ye'll walk the plank!"

Steve was still not feeling the greatest on Monday morning, so he stayed on the beach and relaxed while the rest of us got on the boat (whose propellor had been fixed by the rental shop right by the boat launch).  The kids played on the playground and the beach and then we spent some time on the boat doing some tubing.  Brian wasn't feeling fabulous either, so we skipped water skiing this time.

Trevor went tubing with me and Austin and had a blast!

Nanny and Austin are tubing pros!

They even did a little kick line while tubing.

Sarah was feeling great again, and loves to sit up front in the boat.

Theo got in a little nap on the boat.  I was a little jealous - a nap sounded really good by then!

Before heading home, we had some ice cream at the "Chocolate Ox".

Thus, our adventure at Grand View Lodge this year came to a close.

If, however, we thought our trials and tribulations were over, we were wrong!  On the drive home, a tire on the boat trailer blew and Nanny and Grandpa were stuck on the side of the road for hours waiting for someone to come tow the trailer (very hard to do - would have to be a giant flatbed truck to put the whole boat and trailer on) or to replace the tire. They ended up getting someone to come take the tire and try to repair or replace it.  Eventually, they made it home safely.  We got the kids home after stopping on the drive home for dinner.  After the weekend we had, bedtime could not possibly go smoothly, right?  Trevor threw a huge tantrum for bedtime.  By the time the kids were in bed, the car was unloaded, mountains of laundry was sorted, and I got cleaned up in the shower, we were SO ready to be done with that vacation.  Ugh!