Labor Day Adventures

This weekend we had our annual Cowley Family Reunion and it was fantastic. The boys and I debated what to make for our portion of the menu and decided on Chinese Chicken Salad from the Hungry Girl site. I kept feeling like it was missing something, but all in all it was pretty tasty. We also made some Better Than Rice Krispy Treats-Peanut Butter Style that I found on my friend Michelle's blog Loving Every Second (she does a whole ton of fun and easy crafts and recipes there). I think they turned out pretty tasty if I do say so, and they were completely got at the end of the day so thats a good sign too.


The deliciousness

We ended up staying at the Day's Inn in Richfield and it was different. Our room kind of smelled like an old person house but otherwise, it wasn't too bad. However, when we went swimming I decided that they must put something in the water to make it look blue, because when we dived down with goggles on you couldn't see your hand in front of you. That was kind of disgusting. And then the hot tub. Ohhhhh the hot tub. Ry has this big fear of anything on the sides of a pool/hot tub (filters, jets, you name it) and I learned this weekend its for good reason. We were chilling in the hot tub and he was fearful so I scooted over to be in front of some intake thing....and got sucked in. I figured it was just a fluke so I didn't really mention it to anyone, however I also didn't let my kids near it just in case. Well the next day we found out that the son of some friends that had come along had also got sucked into the intake. Except that he ended up with a HUGE hickey looking thing that had swollen up and such. I felt horrible for him, as it looked like it had to hurt. So Day's Inn in Richfield...throw some air freshners in your rooms and please put a cover on your intake thing in the hot tub. Thats a lawsuit waiting to happen. We did have great dinner of sloppy joes and tasty sides as well. Then afterwards we had a very insightful talk in relation to redundancy. The sister in laws and myself were in charge of games (although they did all the work I think) and they were sure fun...at least to watch. I think everyone else had fun too though. Then we got a fire going and the kids roasted marshmellows.

Saturday we woke up to some very tasty biscuits and gravy and then headed out to the hills. My brother successfully scared the bejeezies out of myself and his wife by going up and down the steepest slopes he could. It was good fun. Then we got to the place where we ended up going repelling. It was a good spot, however climbing up that mountain was not so good. The bottom part was great, but there was a part that was steep and straight up. Like you were literally climbing the side of the mountain to get up to the top as if you were a mountain climber (this was before some brilliant soul discovered an easier path...just my luck). I would've taken a picture, however I had an immense fear that I would fall to my death if I took my hands off the wall. I've decided getting older makes you more aware of these things, because in my younger years I would've just hopped, skipped and jumped up that rock. Doesn't help I'm WAY more out of shape now as well. I'll get to that later though.

I did finally get to the top after some reassurance from one of my cousins who was headed up behind me and got set to go down. Tyler and Ryder had both already been at the top for quite some time (I'm really curious how they got up, but I'm happy I wasn't with them or I would've been freaking out a little I'm sure) and I was going to try to go down tandem with one of them, but our friend Jason requested I try going down alone first, since it had been since my teenager years that I had done this last. And that was for good reason. I did good at first, however then I lost control of the rope and just kinda swung around until I finally reached the bottom.

Everyone had quite the unique styles of coming down from little twinkle toe jumps to hanging upside down...to the one brave soul who went commando (front first) and I think that girl is a superstar just FYI. The boys all chickened out except for Ryder...I'm still laughing that the youngest of the 3 is the only one who would take the plunge. And he absolutely LOVED it. He is going to be my daredevil kid I think. After everyone was done, we went down to the Rotary Park and ate lunch together then departed for home.
There were a couple family members missing from the group and we sure missed everyone that couldn't make it, hopefully next year we will be able to get together again and include some of those that were missing this time.

It really was such a fun time, however I'm pretty sure that I got some sort of heat exhaustion since I ended up with a pounding headache and just kind of wanted to puke all afternoon. But after a quick dinner and some showers for all around, the kids and I all headed to bed at like 8:00 pm which is fairly standard for them, but not so standard for me. The sleep did me good though. I'm still not feeling fantastic, but the headache is gone and I'm good for the day.

I learned alot about myself this weekend. Some good, some bad. I'm sure I'll go into it during another post, some other time.

So without further ado, a couple pictures from the repelling adventure! I hope everyone had a great weekend!

This is the bottom of hte mountain...looking up to where we were going to repel from.

This is the view from the top...kinda scary for sure.



I really need a better camera than my phone. But this is Ryder and my cousins husband Brandon coming down the mountain.




This is me swinging down with my brother Scott belaying for me and Nate "assisting"