Rhoades Reunion - Part II

I probably should just mention more about our family.  Dad and Mom had 13 children, with one baby girl dying at about 13 hours old, so we grew up with a family of 12; 8 girls and 4 boys.  All of us siblings and our spouses were able to make it to the reunion.  From those 12 children, there are 123 grandchildren; 114 of them were there.  And from the grandchildren, there were 72 great grandchildren and 62 of them were there.  Since our reunion there has been two more great grandchildren born.

Saturday morning we had family pictures.  All of our families got them done separately and we got pictures of the whole group, grandchildren, children, etc.  The whole process of getting our pictures done went amazingly quick and painless!!

Our whole group picture and then close ups (not posed anymore) along the line-up.  Dad is on the tractor seat and the family is in age order, with the oldest starting on the left.

Dad and his grandchildren.

Dad with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Dad with his children.

Dad with his children and their spouses.

Dad with his children in age order.

The boys - Chet, Rick, Dan and Nathaniel.  Something was apparently really funny so I chose this picture over one that Nathaniel was looking in :)

Us girls - from back left - Charity, Elva, Darla, Leona, Nancy.  Front left - Clara, Denise Ramona.

The oldest and youngest siblings . . . Rick and Leona.

The front of the "store" and "coffee shop" (named Pantoski Coffee after the road we grew up on.

Two of the baristas.

 Store cashiers.

So many choices!!

Saturday afternoon we had a scavenger hunt.  The kids seemed to have a lot of fun running around and searching for things . . . or getting signatures for some things.  We also had a water balloon toss and gunny sack races.  Our family did the gunny sack races so I have pictures of that.

We had a mostly adult male group.

Saturday night during the supper hour there were guessing jars.  There was one table of jars for young kids to guess and one table for older kids and adults to guess.  If you got the closest amount of items you got the jar with whatever was in it.  That was really fun.

And since I have sooo many pictures again on here, I guess I'll do a third post!  Hopefully it won't take as long to get it posted as this one did.

Rhoades Reunion - Part 1

After a whole entire year of planning, the time had finally come . . . August 18-22, 2016, was our Richard & Eunice Rhoades family reunion.  We have 251 living members and 223 were able to be there!  We had it at the Oregon Christian Convention Conference and Retreat Center in Turner, Oregon.  It was the perfect size for us.

Of course, 3 of the days were supposed to be 100+ degrees!!  And, no air conditioning!!  As far as I know though, we all lived through it :)

There is a creek that runs along the property edge.  It was great for tubing and swimming.  It was the first place many people went to as soon as they got there!

We began our reunion with an easy meal of Papa Murphy's pizza . . . not that feeding over 200 people is easy with any meal!  This meal was a "volunteer" meal, as far as who helped to serve it.  The rest of the meals were all planned with a "head cook" and groups made up.  We each only had to serve one time during the reunion.

Our first planned "game" was red rover.  Tim & Leona's family led it.

Dad enjoyed watching from his camp chair.

After the game, our store opened for the first time.  The kids could hardly contain themselves while waiting!!  Here's the view looking out at the line-up.

And here's the view of them from the outside, looking at the store.

The first cashiers, ready to take money.

Friday morning Rick & Kathy's family organized a mile race.  They had different age categories and they gave prizes to the winners after our auction Friday night.

A bunch of the guys cooking hamburgers and hotdogs for Friday's lunch.

I'm pretty bad at getting pictures of much of anything.  Friday afternoon Nathaniel and Sally led a game of Kiddie Pool Kickball.  Google it and watch a Youtube video if you haven't heard of it.  It was super fun to watch . . . and with it being sooo hot, I think everyone who played was happy to get wet.

Friday evening we had an auction to help pay for our food.  Many of the family donated lots of neat things and it was a great success!  Justin was our auctioneer and Kevin, Kent and Chad helped out.  They did a great job!  We also had a couple tables of small things that were priced that we could buy outright.  There was a building that we didn't need for anything else, so we were able to set up the auction and just lock it up.  It was super hot in there!

Our tables set up with small, priced items.

More pictures with our auction items.

I took these pictures early and there were several more nice baskets brought in later that had to be kept cool.

A few pictures while we were waiting for the auction to begin.

This auction was sooo fun!  I never dreamed it would be so successful.  I hadn't been to an auction since I was probably less than 10 years old.

I guess I better end this first part here.  More to come on the rest of the reunion.

Huckleberry Picking

Aimee came back home for a week and a half to attend our Rhoades reunion.  She really wanted to go huckleberry picking while she was here, so we planned for that.  We'd already previously been up to pick at Dogob a couple weeks earlier so we decided to go to Bare Mountain.  We got there right about when it was time to eat, so we began with that, while viewing this wonderful scenery.  David got settled in his camp chair and said the view was so nice he might just stay there and not pick berries!  He did end up picking.

We had some really cute little helpers!

And some cute bigger helpers, too!  Aimee actually got into picking and didn't want to stop.

When we arrived back at the van, the sky was really gorgeous!

When we were getting ready I saw all of the big girls had on Waterways shirts so I decided to match . . . so then we had to get a picture!!

And a couple pictures of all of the kids on a log sitting there where we parked.

And, last but not least, the fruits of our labors!  This is probably the best we have ever done at one time . . . 5 1/4 gallons of huckleberries!!

All packaged and ready to freeze.

A very successful trip . . . lots of berries picked, lots of sightseeing and fun running around in the forest . . . only in the Great PNW!!!