Bottema Family Reunion

Even though the drive was SO long, I'm so very happy we decided to come to this reunion. I love my Bottema family and we had so much fun! There was so much family history, pictures, things my Grandma had made, and pictures of everybody on display, but this was the only picture I took.

Karen tracked down a cotton candy machine!  My Grandpa used to have a cotton candy machine, and he would hand out cotton candy on Halloween.  These pictures speak for themselves- the kids went nuts over the cotton candy!

We had a cake decorating contest that day and a family talent show.  These are the only pictures I took, but I think I need to mention Carson's Jesus cake and Cody's angry bird pig cake for memory's sake.  Khristen and Sherri sang their opera song that Khristen would sing for all her pageants (with a tamborine solo by Bryce), Cody and his brothers put on a poem/skit about the infamous prank we played on Uncle Paul at another reunion, and Karen's family performed a pretty epic lip sync to Neil Diamond's "Comin' to America"

There was also a slide show of my Grandpa's pictures from Korea. And we got to ride in the Green Hornet!  I don't personally have any childhood memories of this vehicle, I guess it was my Great Grandpa's and it was really cool!

The next day was the 4th and we started it out by going to the Tooele parade!  My kids buckets were overflowing with candy.

We went back to the church for a whole bunch of pretty epic games!

Water war- regular war except the winning card gets to through a cup of water on the loser!  Lose five hands and you get a pitcher of water dumped on you!

This quickly turned into a water fight :)

Cheetoh head-- put shaving cream on a shower cap and throw cheetohs!

Whisper challenge: One person has headphones on with really loud music and has to guess what the other person is trying to tell them ("salted peanuts" bahahahaha!)

Say anything:  Each person takes a turn literally saying anything and the first person to repeat or slip up gets a piece of tape stuck on their face by their opponent!

Human Hungry Hungry Hippos: laundry baskets, something to roll on, and ballons.  Hilarious!

We also had a white elephant auction.  Everyone was given $20 fake money to bid with and we all bid on items we had brought!  It was so much fun!

All five of us girl cousins were born within 2 years of each other.  We have always been really close and are the reason it's so important to me that my kids are close with their cousins!

Okay so I don't have the original picture we are trying to recreate here but just imagine a bunch of 80's hair children in matching 4th of July outfits that are hand painted with puffy paint ;)

Just kidding, I found it!

After the reunion we went to Donald's shop to shoot bottle rockets, tractor rides, ice cream and fireworks!  He also had a caboose that the kids thought was so awesome!