Reunion

So, it’s been wet, rainy, and overcast for oh, about the last twenty years.  (Feels like.)  And this morning I woke up to a GORGEOUS, BEAUTIFUL, HAPPY, BRIGHT blue sky with sunshine streaming everywhere.  Ahhhh. 

And then, clouds moved in and covered all the blue.  Ruff.  So, for today, I thought I would hark back to a happier, sunnier, warmer time.  Here are some pictures from the reunion that I never posted because 1) I was moving to I didn’t know where and that consumed much of my time, 2) my sister already posted all about it, and 3) there were so many pictures that I was overwhelmed. 

But anyhow, now we can have a delightful little reminisce about the 2009 Rasmussen Family Reunion.  All out of order, but that’s okay.

There was the annual karaoke contest (karaoke used loosely, meaning lip-synch, sing-along, or whatever).  Derek and Brooke’s family won.  Again.  Ruff.  ;)  I have to say, their Mormon rap song was pretty sweet.  Bear Lake.  Ethne had a fun time.Races, tackle football games, eating sandy chips and sandwiches.  Good times.  

Wyatt posed.w Brett and I did a trick.

Then Hazel and Uncle Ethan did a trick too.

  This was from the Carnival Day, which was way WAY awesome.  Grandpa with Ornery Ethne. Brett was assigned to do the Mad Scientist booth. Ethan’s job was the Dip of Death.  Later, in the afternoon when the sun had shone on the water and warmed it up, kids took turns getting dumped.  And listen to this—my brother Wyatt convinced me to get in and sit there –with all my clothes on—and let him have JUST ONE throw.  So, I did.  And after his ONE throw, he ran up and hit the thingee with his hand.  I scraped up my arms grabbing on to keep myself up (I deserved it for being so gullible).  My bottom half was soaked, but at least not my whole self.  It kept me comfortably cool for the rest of the day till I dried out.  :) Wyatt and Megan were in charge of Pony Rides.

Uncle Tim had scoured D.I. and the Dollar Store (I think) for weeks and had incredibly cool prizes at his Balloon-Dart game. Kami and Lindsay Ann were the AWESOME face-painters.  They were awesome.   Frozen Snowcones served by Strong Man Jack himself.  (A reunion with Grandpa ALWAYS includes snowcones.)

And there were hotdogs, as any good carnival should have.

  Brett’s face painting job was a little trick—see if you can tell which eye is the real one and which is the fake.  (Because of this exciting incident two days before.)

There was some slip-and-slidin’.

I am so lucky to have such a gorgeous mom.

  Me and Lindsay Ann looking gorgeous.  (I was borrowing Ethan’s hat.) And our daughters.  Ethne and Cassidy are incredible posers.

Wow- the following pictures… well, I can’t put it any better than how Andrea put it:

Rules to live by according to Derek:
IF YOU CAN'T BE BUFF,
BE WEIRD.
Girls dig it.

 

Isn’t the likeness of the real Jack and the poster Jack startlingly similar? (Kami is responsible for the awesome posters I believe.) Lindsay hung out in the Magic Tree House and gave away books.  I like that in a carnival. During the races, I insisted on a crawling race between Talmage and Isabel.  Talmage smoked her, as you can see.  Yeehaw!! Andrea introduced a new race that was how to get across the gym the CRAZIEST way.  It was awesome.

  There are so many more pictures.  But that’s enough.  Good times, very good times I say.

Date Day.

So a very lovely and very generous lady in our ward offered to watch our children on Saturday so Brett and I could go out. She told us we could leave in the morning and come back when we were tired. Oh, the beauty and generosity of such a statement. How we appreciated our day!

We got into a tiff in the morning (had to laugh that you and Leo did the same thing, Kam), but once we dropped the kids off and got going, we had a fantastic time. We went to Interlaken where we happened to see that there were these old-fashioned steam engines being displayed, so that was cool for Brett.

Then we got lunch, and it was delicious. Well, Brett’s was delicious, and I really wished I had ordered a kebob like him. Mmmmm mmm. I want one right now.

Then we drove to Lauterbrunnen. Did I mention it was gray and drizzly all day, just like it’s been for the last TWO WEEKS?!! It was. Everything was shrouded in cloudy mist. Not so good for the views, but cool in it's own way. We went up and saw the Falls inside the mountain. Here are a few waterfall pictures from the way too many that we took.

Then we drove to the Grindelwald Glacier. In the picture below, you can see the steps we climbed going up the mountain. Apparently there were 890 stairs. I didn’t count. We were glad we didn’t come here with kids, because it wasn’t kid friendly. We could imagine Hazel slipping and falling to her death. She nearly does that on a daily basis anyway, without steep wooden slippery stairs going up a cliff face.

So I don’t look the best in this picture, but hey- I had just climbed 890 stairs. Then there was this suspended bridge.There’s me on the bridge.

Hallo.Underneath the bridge it looks like this. On our way back, we got a whole bunch of big rocks and dumped them over and watched them break, or ricochet or splash. Good times. Then we may or may not have climbed over the fence and climbed farther to actually see the glacier. Apparently, global warming has shrunk the glaciers a bunch, and so they’re not nearly what they used to be. Says one person’s blog, “When Sue and I were last here in 1994 the Grindelwald Glacier was one of the region's great tourist attractions. A short walk brought you to the head of the glacier, from where you climbed a few steps to a tunnel carved deep into the ice. Inside were ice sculptures, but the best sight was the amazing deep blue ice all around, which was estimated be thousands of years old.”

Now you have to climb past the “Danger” signs to even see the glacier. Here’s another article you can read about it if you feel like it.

But anyway, Brett did see the glacier and took this picture, but he says it was cooler in real life. So, a day in the clouds with my honey. We had a really great time. I love being with Brett. Brett loves me too. I know because after we watched the movie David Copperfield and we were talking about how lucky David was that his first wife, Dora, got sick and died so that he could marry Agnes, whom he really loved more – Brett said, “You don’t need to die because I don’t want to marry anyone else.” Such sweet reassurances warm my heart. ;)

Aargh.

It's 8 in the morning, and though it is a holiday, Brett went to work so he could try to fix my glasses which Talmage broke. Arrrgh!!

Sold.

We sold our house on Monday.  Well, it’s actually more that Ben and Allison sold our house for us and the closing was on Monday.  Yeah, Ben and Allison are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO nice that when they heard a couple in church were looking to buy a house, they showed them our little house (which is the house THEY WERE LIVING IN), so that we could get it sold EVEN THOUGH that means they’ll have to find another place to live the next year.  Blessings on Ben and Allison.  They made it so easy for us.  We didn’t worry about it standing empty for any time, no realtors, no nothing. 

So anyway, I thought it would be apropos to reminisce a little about the house we spent five years in.  The first house we owned, the house we spent our time in while plugging through graduate school, the house we brought home two babies to—practically three, because Hazel was a week old when we moved in.  Here it is in all its glory in 2004.  (Yes, our car was smashed up.  But we got a great deal from insurance money.  Wonder of wonders.) When we moved in we had to replace both the fridge and oven/stove because they didn’t work, even though they were supposed to have.  Also, we decided to replace the plain sink in the bathroom with a vanity so that we would have a small cupboard space underneath and small countertop.  So, Brett ripped out the sink, and was ready to put in the new vanity, when he discovered the sheetrock was all moldy on the inside.  WHAT?  Apparently there was a small leak that had not been noticed.  So Brett ripped out all the sheetrock in the bathroom and around the corner where the washing machine was and into the kitchen and replaced it.  Which means, he had to take out the toilet.  Which means, we had no toilet.  Which would be kind of fun and adventuresome except I had just had a baby a week before.  Which means it was not so much fun to pee in a bucket in the middle of the night.  But still adventuresome, I guess.  Actually, I credit our coming out of that adventure with our sanity still intact to my mother, who had flown out to help us move and help me with new baby Hazel.  She didn’t have a toilet in her house growing up, so she was fine with peeing in a bucket.  I was so glad she was there while we figured out some of these things with our house—otherwise tempers would have not been in such good check.  :)  These little pictures below are of Brett and Jethro fixing the bathroom at that time.  Can you BELIEVE how little Jethro was??????  That’s how big Talmage is now pretty much!!!!  WOW!!!!!

And finished, with the new vanity.  Later, we replaced the mirror and took off all the wallpaper.

We (well, Brett and our wonderful friend Seth) replaced all the windows.  When we moved in the fireplace looked like this.  But the fake bricks were crumbling off.  So Brett ripped off the mantel and all the brick.          We borrowed a tile saw from our awesome friend Jared and put up better tile.  It was like this for a while, till we decided what to do for a mantel.     In the end, we bought some crown molding and wood from Lowe’s and Brett fashioned this awesome mantel.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a really good picture of it after it was stained, and this was the best I could find on short notice.  But it looked REALLY good.  One of the selling points of the house, I’d say.  Oh, also you can see the new carpet Brett and Seth put down while I was on a trip sometime.  Above (you can see it really well in the first fireplace picture) the yucky cheapo carpet, below the nice pretty carpet.

We painted the outside of the house.

Here’s the new carpet again, and Brett brought the tile in farther in the front room, so that it went in front of the coat closet, so you can actually walk in and not get your wet shoes on the carpet.  Talmage is just learning to bear crawl.  Awww, so cute.

The kitchen had a lot of work too.  It went from this

to white cupboards, and then after an unfortunate leak in the drain incident,

to this (p.s. don’t ever EVER tile your countertop).

There was a bat in our garage once.  I thought that was worth mentioning.  (You guys remember the bat, right?)  I actually painted the front room colors that I ended up loving, and I put up flowers and pictures on the walls.  (That took me about four years to do, so I’m pretty proud.  Of my sister.) We turned this spot into this:

Brett made these shelves for our pantry.  Oh and he also made the garage into a biodiesel lab, and cut holes into the wall so he could heat our house on veggie oil too.  We fixed the holes before we moved out.  (Thanks Ben for painting over the disgusting walls in the garage.)  And then it was home to our dear cousins, and now, it will be home another family.    Bye bye house.  It’s been real.