20 Years?!?!

It is so hard to believe that I graduated from high school 20 years ago!  This weekend was my 20 year reunion.  I was so apprehensive to go.  I wasn't sure how people would be.  I didn't go to my 10 year, because I wasn't invited and I didn't think people would have grown up enough.  So I decided to go to my 20 year and then see how it was.  If it was bad I wasn't going to go to another one.  I ended up having such a great time!  It was really good to see people I hadn't seen in so long!  I'm so glad that I went.

Friday night we stayed at my parents house.  They love seeing the grandkids.  There was an activity Friday, but it was at a bar and I didn't feel comfortable about going there.

My high school is being torn down to build a new one.  One of my classmates is a teacher at the school so he opened up the school Saturday morning so we could tour the school one last time.  I took the kids so they could see where I went to school and hear about some of the stories we talked about remembering.

Saturday Evening was going to be at the local events center, but it got changed to a classmates house because there weren't going to be as many people as originally planned.  I'm actually glad it got moved because it was much more intimate and it felt like we could all talk to one another.  I also liked that there didn't seem to be groups of people.  After everyone ate, they just made a really big circle and included everyone and again we shared stores, talked about high school, and what everyone was doing.  It was really enjoyable.

This is most of the people who came.  We had about 121 people graduate but we definitely didn't have that many come.  And 1 guy didn't even graduate with us.  He left Junior year, but felt like he should have come so did.

Front row:  Teresa Arteaga, Holli Larson, Kimberly Lewis, Jaimee Castaneda, Anthony Manning, Melissa Cardenas, Justin Christensen, Choncy Pena, Jaime Morales

Back Row:  Steve Aguilar, Me, Armando Carrazco, Cory Blount,Chris Snyder, Josh Dunahoe, Aaron Shea, Chad Thornock, Brad Charvet

Jet boats and Chetco River

On Wednesday we headed up to Gold beach to take a jet boat ride up the river.  It was so much fun.  There was one moment I thought we might lose Malachi...Thankfully my mom caught him really quick.  Jocelyn did not like the life vest, but once the boat started moving faster, she fell right to sleep.  This was such a blast, but we did get pretty wet.

I think this was one of the kids' favorite activities.  This took the whole day.  We were supposed to have a fire on the beach and have hot dogs for dinner, but it was really cold and windy.  So we went to a different fire house that lots of tvs, and we had a movie on while we ate dinner and visited.  The kids watched the movie as the adults sat and visited.  It was still a lot of fun.

We stopped at Emily's house so they could take us to the new fire house.

They put on the Lego movie, and the kids loved it.  

Thursday was the day to go swimming in the Chetco River.  When we woke up and left it was so foggy and cold there by the ocean.  But just about a half hour inland, it was sunny and warm.  Everyone got in and enjoyed the river.  It was definitely cold at first, but we had so much fun.  We took up leftovers for lunch and just parked our cars right on the rocks by the river.  We had a nice little camp just set up there.

The kids have just loved being with Jocelyn, especially Rachel.  She loves to just sit and hold her.  They all just gather around Jocelyn, and she is just loving the attention.  

For our final night we met at a park just outside of town and all cooked in dutch ovens.  It was so good.  After dinner we had a short little talent show.  The kids all did really well.  Every night after the kids were in bed, we would go to my parents room and talk and laugh and just have a good time.  It's hard to believe that our reunion is over.  We have had such a great time.  Emily and Jeremiah did such a fantastic job.  Now I get to plan the next one in 2020.