Petersen Family Reunion

Every three years, my family has gotten together for a family reunion. There were about 40 of us at the first one in 1984. The scope of this has increased every year with the addition of spouses, grandchildren and great grandchildren. This year we had over 110 people come together and renew acquaintances. What a fun three days we had at Pinewoods Resort in Duck Creek Village, Utah!

My parents had twelve children and they now have 67 grandchildren and over 80 great grandchildren. Mom and Dad are in their 90's and traveling was a little more difficult, so they flew out here first class and the airport people took good care of them so they didn't have to walk much.




This is all of my sibling, except one brother, who could not be there.


Here is all of the Cox family with my parents.



I introduce Evelyn (4) to my Mom shortly after we got there. She became enamored of the "Lady with the White Hair" and always had to go say "hi" to her. After our family picture, she had to be coaxed away because she wanted to be with her. I was laughing when she insisted I should take her to the "Lady with the White Hair"'s house in Minnesota and that we go there now! (I wanted to at least finish the reunion!)


One of the hikes we took was to Cascade Falls. This area is know for the Lava tubes and Navajo Lake drains by way of one of the tubes and comes out of the rock at this point. It was a fun hike, but a little unnerving because there is barely room for two people to pass in some spots and the other side is a cliff that goes way down! I walked with Evelyn to the falls and she was pretty steady, but Megan (almost 3) wanted to be Grandma's partner on the way back and she is a little less steady, so Daddy Seth came to the rescue when the path was a little more difficult.

Capital Reef Fun

We took a fun quick trip to Capital Reef National Park last weekend. As much as we love going there, we have never been there in May. The flowers were beautiful in bloom! We did have to be concerned about dodging the rain and some wind, but over all we had a great time.

And we had to get pictures of everyone in our favorite rock holes. Evan, his friend, Rachel, from Canada, Daniel and Elisabeth all climbed into these. Then David joined them on the easiest seat to get in.

Annalisa (Kadie's 7 month old) loved having a ride on her Daddy's back! She was such a good traveler and we think she liked the hat, because she kept it on the whole time.

Wedding

I know this seems fast to a lot of you, but three days after my post about Caleb and Bethany's engagement, things changed fast. Bethany's Mom was not going to be able to make the trip to Utah for their April wedding because of health problems, so the wedding was moved up to February 19!!!! Caleb and Bethany had been planning to fly to South Carolina on President's Day Weekend anyway, so David and I bought tickets for that weekend and flew out to be with them while they were married in the beautiful Columbia South Carolina LDS Temple. It was a wonderful weekend and we met some new friends! Bethany was raised by two wonderful people, Dave and Rachel Venus. These first few photos were taken outside the temple.






Caleb, Bethany, Dave Venus, Rachel Venus, brother, Rob and his wife Beth.

The following pictures are from the reception in Utah. It has been a wonderful time. I also have to mention that we were a very stressed out family at this time also. Rachel had been on crutches for over a month and her ankle was not getting better. Because of this, she could not drive, so between Caleb, Alisa and I, we were getting her to and from classes and to the other places she needed to be. I also started substitute teaching full time for a teacher on maternity leave. Now that all of this is over, I have time to update the blog and let you all see what we have done the last two months!


At the reception, they wanted a theme with stars. In the middle of the night, the idea came to me to find some shiny stars to tie to the end of balloons filled with helium. I was thinking that I would need about 300 or more balloons, but the lights in the cultural hall had a dimmer and when the lights were off, the effect was perfect. Alisa was taking pictures and she didn't get one with the lights dimmed that showed off how well it came off. So just imagine in the picture that the lights are dim and all you can really see is the shimmering stars hanging above you.




Zina, David, Bethany, Caleb, Grandmother, Kay Cox and Grandfather, Nyle Cox.
The wedding cake made by a friend of Bethany's.

Engagement

For those who haven't heard, Caleb has found a wonderful girl and they have decided to get married on April 21, 2011! Here are some photos that Alisa took of them.

Her name is Bethany Venus and grew up in Duncan, South Carolina. She has been attending BYU and will graduate in April.

Bethany and Caleb met at a 4-H mentors retreat. (They both mentor different children.) Caleb never asks for girls phone numbers when he first meets them, something about if it is meant to be, then he will run into them again ;). He did ask for her number and after Christmas, they knew that they wanted to be together for ever!

We are so happy for them both. Bethany is a beautiful, happy, level-headed person and we are happy that she will be joining our family.

Bear River Trip

David and I shocked our children by taking off Saturday on an impromptu trip to follow the path of the Bear River. It was about 9 hours of travel and we didn't get to see it all, so we plan on finishing it sometime. We traveled through the Uintah Mountains and parts of Wyoming and Idaho to follow it.

We were driving along and hadn't planned on stopping, but it was such a breath-taking sight, we had to! This is a gorge along the Provo River, sorry, I don't remember the name of the gorge. We didn't take the time to hike down to it, but we plan to sometime.




This is the Provo River Falls. It was so beautiful! We stopped and wandered around for a while. Looks like it was a pretty popular spot for stopping and cooling off a little. Not sure that I wanted to get in the snow-fed waters, but it was a pretty hot day, even in the mountains.


We also had to stop and take pictures at the vista point near Hayden Peak. The Peak is 12,479 feet and we are at nearly 10,000 feet at the point of this vista. I was even a little nervous taking this picture because of the look of these cliffs.

We plan on doing this again, so we hope it is not that big of a shock to our children when it happens.

Clear Creek Hike

We took a little trip to Castle Dale, UT, to see the Castle Valley Pageant this week and stopped at Clear Creek and did some hiking in Green Canyon on the way down there. Evan and Alisa were with us, as well as Daniel and Elisabeth. We saw some neat things on our way! First stop in the canyon was at a sulfur springs. Didn't take a picture because it smelled so bad, we didn't want to stay long! A little further on the path we saw this toadstool. It was huge! That is Elisabeth's foot next to it. There were also a lot of butterflies and I got a good picture of this one. All my pictures of the swallowtail were blurry.


These are the mountains looking east from the Skyline Drive in Carbon County. The coal mine in the center has the longest running conveyor belt in the world running from there to the tipple that puts the coal into the train cars. Just an interesting little fact that David knew.

As we were coming down the trail out of Green Canyon, a grouse walked right in front of us, puffed out his neck and then strutted down the path in front of us clucking all the time, like he was letting us know that he was the king of this path. He didn't seem to be afraid of us and so we were able to watch him for several minutes. At least I think it was a him. Kind of a fun thing for us all to see.

Bingham Canyon Mine

We found out that the Bingham Canyon Mine was having free admission this week, so we decided to take the grandchildren for an outing. Micah has the most pictures because he wanted to sit with the big rocks that were inside the old cart and didn't get out until everyone else had a picture while they were there. Evan came along to help and Daniel and Elisabeth were great helps in watching the younger ones for us.