The FFR part 2

Ready for day 2?

The sun came up on the Farm and with a bright beginning like that, I knew it was going to be another GREAT day!!

Despite the fact that some of the crew stayed up way into the early morning hours playing Skip-Bo (I was not one of the party, just FYI :) a few people took Dad up on his "Polar Bear Plunge" challenge and got up to jump in the pool first thing in the morning.
  In fact, 4 out of 5 people in the picture got up and went for a run before taking the plunge. In this picture it's Kelani, Dad, Dillon, Ben, and Kim.
  Dad made little activity trackers for everyone so that with each event they participated in, they got a stamp on their card - this on definitely earned a stamp for these guys. :)

  Truth be told by those who had the experience, the water wasn't really even very cold. But Dad had built up a fire to warm up by, just in case.

 Considering the number of people, the kinds of activities that were going on, and the general amount of shinanigans that were all combined during the reunion, we had a rather impressive low number of injuries.
   We always like to tease that our family get togethers won't be complete without a visist to the local ER, which we managed to avoid but we did have a few casualties. Things like:
   Getting shot in the eye by a speeding, soggy marshmallow,
   Three of us slicing our fingers on a slippery jello pan (but the blood matched the jello so no worries),
   Dad tweaking his calf and limping around for a while,
    but the most impressive was Audrey-

 She was riding the train on the first day but her little wagon jammed up and as Ben put it, "She tried to stop the train with her face."
  She got skinned up and had some sweet bumps and scrapes. They got her all cleaned up but then the next morning when she came over, her eye was totally swollen up like that. Some suggested that maybe she'd gotten a bug bite to top it off, but others said that she had a bit of an infection. Whatever it was, it was a real beauty! She took it like a champ and didn't let it stop her from partying it up for the rest of the reunion.

   There was also foosball and air hockey set up in the garage and there was always someone ready to have a nice round of it!

Day 2 included a "fish pond" for everyone, too. Grandma, Heather, and Mom were the tricky little "fish" that sat behind the tarp and attached prizes for all the fishermen that came to give it a go. It was so fun! I even scored myself some delicious sour gummy worms. :)

Another more recent tradition is to set up the big water slide in Jared's yard. There's just enough of a down-hill slope that they lay out a huge tarp and set a sprinkler at the top and we end up with an instant slide! That was always one of David's favorite things to do during the summer. Some of the girls decided to lather up in dish soap to see if they went down any faster.
  I'm not sure if that worked, but it was probably the closest thing to bathing that most of the little kids had had during the party! :)

 I think it goes without saying that most of our activities were all planned around meal time! :) We ate so many tasty things during the reunion. Lunch that day was just some quick and easy hot dogs, chips, and fruit, but it was all delish - who doesn't love a good roasted hot dog?

 Believe it or not, Malia, Kelani, and Lizzy even managed to slip in a little nap during the afternoon. It's hard work to have so much fun.....

This was the amo just waiting to be used for the food fight!

Before the food fight started we had a pie eating contest. Anyone who felt up to the challenge was given a whole pie filled with pudding and topped with whipped cream (the kids got smaller pies, but whole just the same). The goal was to be the first to finish your pie - crust and all. I sat that one out, but am happy about it because it was hilarious to move around and watch everyone dig into their pies.

Uncle Jared was cruising through his!

I love this picture of Cody! I think he was in heaven at getting to eat so much pie as messily as he wanted to!

Ben, Brad, and Heather were so funny, too! Ben put out the warning early on that he would very likely not keep all of his pie down (remember how we'd been eating tons of food already?), so we all kept a weary eye on him! Brad said that he couldn't look up because whenever he saw anyone else it just made him laugh too much to eat. I was impressed with Heather who is still dealing with some morning sickness from expecting their 4th baby, but she's down there doing her best to beat the rest. :)

 I didn't witness it as much as everyone else, but apparently Dad was using his chin to break up his pie shell and looked pretty hilarious! (By the look of this picture, he tried using his forehead, too).

Lizzy was probably one of the daintiest contestors we had. She barely made a dent in her pie and was a little too clean by the end.

 WINNER!!! Uncle Jared came up for air right as I took this picture, so sorry that it's a little graphic! :)

The food fight was supposed to start after the pie eating contest, but I think Dad was planning on giving it an official start - riiiight! The minute that Uncle Jared was pronounced the winner, all heck broke loose.
  We'll never know for sure who threw the first pie, but like "the shot heard 'round the world" once it was fired, there was no going back.
   This was the part I'd been waiting for. Sure, I sat out the races, declined the pie-eating contest, and was content to take pictures of the polar bear plunge, but the food fight was the one I couldn't wait to take part in! I was still trying to take a few pictures before jumping in but I only got a couple before Heather came pelting me with spaghetti and hot rice. So enjoy the few "up close and personal" action shots that I snuck in before I joined the battle.
  I'll let the next couple photos speak for themselves, just note the spaghetti and whipped cream flying through the air in a few of these pictures - that's my favorite part! :)

(Quick note - if there is one thing in this whole world that Grandma cannot pardon, it's the waste of food! I won't take time here to explain what great lengths she's gone to in order to not throw food away, but ask anyone in the family and they can give you horrifying stories... So naturally she was NOT taking part in this activity. Her one problem was that she stood too close to the battle grounds and ended up - not by accident I would say - getting a wad of spaghetti on her back that probably could have fed 2 people for dinner. This is her scurrying away to wash it off!)
  Back to the fight!
                                     

 The aftermath.....

 Everyone kind of dispersed after the fight and when we all re-appeared we looked much cleaner. By then it was time for dinner. Since it was the last night of the reunion this was kind of the "big meal" and we ate smoked ribs and brisket that Dad was super excited to make in his meat smoker.
  Pretty much everyone was able to make it that night except for just a few cousins, so the Farm was full and fun!
                                        

I've got to give a little back ground about the next event on the schedule.

We have had pinatas at family get-togethers for just about as long as I can remember. It wasn't too big of a deal to pick one up from a grocery store and have it live through a few rounds of beatings from us little kids.

Well, I'm the 8th grandkid out of 25, which means that there are a few "big kids" who grew up with the love of taking a swing at the pinata, as well as lots of cousins who are still young and just beginning to apprecicate them.

Dad wanted a way to have a pinata that even the big kids could swing at but that would somehow stand up to the challenge of not letting the candy be turned to powder by the time it broke open.

Winco didn't seem to have the answers Dad had in mind, and so he decided to take matters into his own hands. Dad's really a 'go big or go home' kind of guy so once he got this plan into his mind, he became a bit of a mad scientist. For the last two months or so, he's been pulling long days and late nights to build an undefeatable pinata.

That could take a whole post all on its own, so I'll just briefly say that this pinata included a metal cage, some styrofoam, cardboard, empty apple juice jugs, small explosive fireworks, and a trigger to set off a baking soda vinegar bomb that spewed out through pipes he'd inserted in various places of the pinata.

All of that artillery was paper mached over and decorated to look like...

 The Incredible Hulk (and a little bit like Michael Jackson, too)!

This was Dad's pride and joy and out of everything he'd done to get ready for the reunion, this was what he couldn't wait for. Everyone had been hearing rumors about "Ron's pinata" as the reunion got closer but no one knew exactly what was going to happen with it or that it was essentially going to fight back.
 So after dinner got over on Friday, Dad and two of his brothers hauled The Hulk (which probably weighed close to 50 lbs) out of the back room and out to the yard to hang it from a tree.

While they were getting it all situated the rest of the bunch went over to pan for gold. Grandma had seen someone set up a little game like this for their family so she wanted to try one out for ours. We mixed sand, rolls of coins, and water into the little pool and then the kids came and panned for gold. It was pretty cute!

Before the pinata I also requested that we do a family picture. My family is so patient with me because I know that pretty much everyone hates having to fuss with such a big group picture so I try to take them as quickly as I can!
   Even though we were missing David, and just a few other cousins, I think we managed to get every other person in here - which hasn't happened for a long time!

Finally it was time to gather around the big tree and do the pinatas. Dad did go to Winco and got a pinata for the tiny kids, so we did that first and they had fun with that.

 Harley looks like she's sporting some intimidating war paint for this game!

And sadly - I have no pictures of The Hulk being beat up. There are two reasons for that, 1) I was taking a video of it as long as I could, and I did manage to catch the moment when the b.s./vinegar errupted and started spraying out of Hulk's nose and the back of his head.
2) Shortly after that, my stalwart little camera died on me. The batteries had all they could take and I had to go plug it in to re-charge.
  Just know that it took almost every one of the aunts and uncles, as well as the "big kids" to begin to even make a dent in the paper mache covering, and in the end Dad just broke into it with his hands and threw the candy out. It was hilarious though to see my aunts and uncles even come running for a turn to beat it up, since normally they just sit back and watch their kids do it.
   This was the sunset of the second day and I'd say it was the perfect postlude to the fun we'd had.

I managed to snag one more picture of the second movie night, too. We started with one movie but it wasn't working very well so we decided on, "The Hobbit"! If you ever want to feel like you're in the Shire (which is where I'd go if I could visit a scene from LOTR) and about to take part in a day with the Hobbits, watch it on the Farm in the summer. It was sooo cool!!

And so we come to the end of day 2 of the FFR. I'll wrap up the last day as soon as I can so check in once in a while!