The City

Another family reunion is in the history books. The Jones family reunion, T's moms side was this last weekend in the usual spot, The City of Rocks. The first year we camped out in the middle of the desert, no shade, no rocks to climb, nothing but dirt and sage brush. The past two years we have gone to a different group site by the Sisters, it's great. They have picnic tables set up in a huge rock crevice, provides shade from about 5pm to noon, the best thing is that it keeps the kids in a corner. The corner contains part of the rock that slopes up fifteen feet or so at about a 20 to 30% grade, good and bad. Good, it keeps the kids entertained while also allowing them to learn how to scale rocks. Bad, you have to really watch the little ones and sometimes they get in little fights and the whole time I was just waiting for one of them to come crashing down.



The group site is not right in with the main part of the City, there are not as many rocks for the kids to climb on but there is also no one else around. The kids can be loud and crazy and we don't have to worry about them bugging anyone but us and they had a BLAST. Of course any time they can play outside with their cousins all day in the dirt and climbing rocks they are going to have fun. B was a little nervous to climb the larger and steeper rocks but after a while she gained some confidence and was getting mad at me for trying to help. She had a great weekend and was super cute all weekend. I wish she was always like that and stopped her whiny, sassy moods.



I'm pretty sure that cody didn't get enough sleep, that and he started the weekend off on a bad bump. T's grandpa is a rancher just outside of the City in Almo. We stopped there before heading up to the City to see if Maryann and buzz were there. They were so we hung out for a bit. The kids were chasing around when cody tripped and landed head first on the side table. Picking him up I thought for sure there was going to be a broken nose or a bleeding gash, luckily he ended up with a huge egg on his forehead with a nice little line. His hair covers it up so I don't really have a picture of it. If that would have been me, now in my old age, a fall like that ends my day if not my whole weekend. I would need hand fulls of drugs and lots of sleep. Not ten minutes later he was back chasing around.

All bugs must be smashed!!!


To keep the kids entertained I was throwing this huge frisbee or as b says "fris i bee", into the wind and it would blow back and the kids would chase it down. Some of the kids wanted to throw it themselves while others gave it back to me to throw. Cody and Luke were the two smallest ones out there and rarely got to the frisbee first. Luke is pretty smart and figured out that the frisbee landed behind me a lot of the time and started standing back there and was able to snatch it up couple of times. Cody would get real upset ever time he didn't get it. After a while everyone would get to the frisbee hold on and fight over it, B would just laugh while holding on as everyone got mad. Cody was finally the victor of one of these frisbee tug-a-wars, he then tucked the frisbee under his arm and proceeded to walk down the road. It looked like, "I have my frisbee and I'm going home!" Everyone started to chase him and he ran for it until he did this sweet barrel roll and lost the frisbee. It was truly one of the funniest things I have seen. I was sure the world had come to an end with his sad little cry. We were done playing frisbee.



Some genius rancher in Almo turned his hot spring mud hole into a hot tub and swimming pool. Grandpa Jones tells stories about sitting naked in the hot springs, they had alternating nights for the men and women. I'm not against nakedness and I do think that we are a little too uptight, bodies are bodies, it is what it is, but I am glad that the hot springs is now mandatory swim suits. This is a great place to take the dirty stinky kids and their stinky sweaty dad for a bath!! The hot tub was way to hot but it did help my lower back problems that I had all weekend up until I sat in the hot water.