brooks family blog: August 2010

I feel like the end of July through August was a huge whirlwind. We did so many fun family things all in a short period of time! Every year usually the end of July we have a Brooks family reunion. It is so crazy but so much fun. It is the one time of year that my kids get to see their Brooks cousins and Brandon gets to catch up with his brothers. This year Brad and Sara were in charge of planning and putting together the reunion and they did a fabulous job. I have to admit that at first I was a little skeptical. We were going to be camping in Nevada in the middle of nowhere. I thought that it would be hot and not much to do there but I was way wrong. We camped in The Great Basin National Park for 3 days.

We arrived Thursday around lunch time set up camp had a quick lunch and headed off to explore the Lehman caves. There were two separate tours a 90 minute tour for the older kids and a 60 minute tour for the younger kids. I went on the shorter tour with Maggie and Braden. The caves were amazing.

Once we got back to camp Brad and Sara gave each of the kids a coin bag and told them that there was gold scattered around the camp. The smaller kids got to start looking for "gold" (dollar coins and quarters). Then the big kids were unleashed. They had so much fun searching every part of the camp ground. I think that they were searching for days and still finding a few treasures.

The next day the kids were able to do the metal detector and then we hiked the rest of the day. It was really a great time. It's always fun being together with cousins.