Lost in America... STILL!

Stucki Family Reunion

Before I begin, let me introduce some people in the post so that you won't get confused when I throw out names.
Heather: my room-mate for summer term. I knew her since my DT days.
Zach Clark: Heather's boyfriend
Ben Clark: Zach's fraternal twin brother
Laurie and Gary Clark: Ben and Zach's parents
Spencer and Ab (short for Abraham): Ben and Zach's little brothers

It sounds weird but I atteded my room-mate's boyfriend's mother's family reuion. Ha ha! Sounds complicated. Basically, I attended Ben and Zach's family reunion. The week before the reunion, Laurie and Ab came over to visit Heather and they extended the invitation to me to go to the family reunion. Laurie's parents served a mission in East Malaysia, and her sister and brother-in-law had travelled before to Singapore for business trips.
Heather and I were so darn excited, especially Heather. Zach goes to Westpoint (the best military school in USA) and hence, was seeing him for the 1st time since June. I was just excited to go somewhere and meet the Clarks.

Thursday: The Clarks came to pick us up around 4.30pm and we were off! We drove to Chrissy's (one of Laurie's 5 sisters) house and had a nice big BBQ there. The food was YUMMY, but a pity that I couldn't eat a lot since I had a late lunch. Then we played a few games like Funny Bones (this game is HILARIOUS!), Nerds and Uno. A nice ice-breaker.

Friday: Water theme-park called Raging Waters. SO FUN!!! The weather was perfect- sunny and hot. I think we all got sun burnt quite bad but it was worth it. The entire family was so sporty and willing to try every ride. I had a great time. Even though it still can't compare to Fasntasy Island (why in the freaking world did they have to close that down?!), it was still loads of fun. Joycey, you would have liked going here. There are some very different rides from Lagoon.

After spending the day at Raging Waters, we went back, showered, packed up and went... to some some ulu, deserted place up in the mountains to camp. No kidding. I had no clue where we went but it was to somewhere in the outskirts of Salt Lake city, near Heber City and Park City. And since Park City is a popular winter skiing resort, you can imagine that we were up up (my ears kept popping) in the beautiful mountain range. The scenery was so pretty.

Anyway, we got there in the night and set up camp. Ben and Zach made a nice fire, and while the adults and children went to sleep, the "teenagers" (abt 8 of us) sat around the fire talking and eating. Then we crawled into our sleeping bags literally under the stars and fell asleep at around 2AM. Bad idea. Why?

Because...

Sat: The "teenagers" got up at 6AM to go fishing. Without telling the adults. And we took a car to drive to the lake without getting permission.
But our trip fishing, although a failure in terms of the # of fish we caught (we caught a grand total of, er, zero fish), was really fun to sneak out and just do something random like that. Plus, I saw a MOOSE, a DEER and a SQUIRREL in the wild. Not in the zoo, in the wild. Hee hee.
And then, came the highlight of the trip (for me). I went WATER-SKIING!!! Or at least, I tried to. I was in the water, correct position and all and I was holding on for the ride of my life. But every stinking time just before I could truly get up, this whole big wave of water would splash on me and I would swallow water and just let go.

Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhh!

I was so close to getting up. Nevermind- the next time I water-ski, I'm gonna do it. I'm determined. And I have my "battle" bruises and band-aid to show off. Apparently there was one time I let go and my legs did a full split in the water. Everyone was so concerned except myself because I didn't even know that I had done a full split. All I know was that my skiis kept coming off and that water skiing was much harder than it looked.
But I also did WATER-TUBING and had a freaking great time. I rode with Heather and although we were almost thrown off the tube, we held on and survived. I really like water-tubing.

Then the sad parts came. We drove back to the camp site, rested for a while before seeing Gary and Ab leave to go home. They were going on a Father-Son 50 mile hike on Monday and needed to get back on time.

But the saddest part was having to see Ben and Zach leave later in the night at abt 10pm. They had to report back to West Point by Sunday 5pm. Heather and Laurie were crying and I felt like crying too. Ben and Zach are such a great and terrific guys (good-looking too) and so, darn, plain NICE. Such a mild word but dang it! That's the best word I think that encompasses every good word I can think off.

Sun: We had church service at the camp site. Very interesting experience. The testimonies shared were strengthening and inspiring. This is a good God-fearing family. The we cleaned up, ate lunch and Laurie drove us home.

I miss the Clarks so much. Although I was exhausted by the time I got back home, I had such a great time, it was worth it.

Such wonderful memories...

I'll try to get pictures posted some time.

posted by Funkee Ego @ 10:44 AM