Bartholomew Family Reunion

Another whirlwind of a trip.  Saturday afternoon we arrived home from Trek, then Sunday after church we headed to Tennessee for a family reunion. It's been fun working with the sister missionaries and doing visits.  We recently lost our sister missionaries due to the lack of work in our ward and due to the mission getting much bigger, but with fewer missionaries available.

We had a good drive down to Gaitlinburg area.  I'm glad we can get there on one tank of gas!  We stopped at Stephanie's condo that she rented.  We met up there to celebrate Jame's 3rd birthday.

I love seeing all the cousins playing together.

Sadly, right before Jame's birthday party Stephanie found out that the Relief Society secretary in her ward was killed, and her twin girls.  Stephanie is a counselor in Relief Society so worked with her quite a bit.  I had just met her a couple weeks beforehand.  After church that Sunday she was on her way home after church with her twins, when a semi driver wasn't paying attention to a slow down in a construction zone, and smashed into her car, making it explore basically, and them dying almost instantly.  Her husband was a church for his temple recommend interview.  What a tragedy. 

Sunday night we stayed at Cosby Campground.  We had breakfast the next morning then went to a place to play at the campground then to a visitor center for a little hike.  Sadly the kids were swinging on a vine by a tree at the campground. There was poison ivy and Cal, Elden and Haley all got a bad case of it.

I love that Lillie likes hanging out with Lee.

The little hike was to Cataract Falls!  How appropriate, haha.

Then we went to the cabin for the reunion!

We enjoyed walking around, checking out the space and hanging out.  It took way too long to figure out the bedroom situation. 

The first full and only full day we had the lovely hubbub of family photos!

Everyone was there except Lizzy and Jeff.

All the grandkids with parents assisting some with sad kids.

More activities and games!

 

Love this game--Jokers and Pegs. 

The views were great.

I loved catching up with people and visiting. 

We left very early the next morning so Lee could work at his office.  So we didn't stay up super late that night.  We had a great time with family.  Thanks Sam for arranging all of this and for all the food!  He was in charge of the reunion and put in a lot of work for it.  I love being with my family!