Family Reunion

Family Reunion aside ... one of the highlights of this weekend was our mosquito massacre.  In this case 'highlight' = lowlight.

We were camping at the reunion, and the camping site was literally the perfect storm: the weather, the locale, the standing water, the trees, the shelter ... everything added up to HORRENDOUS mosquitos.  And somehow during the set-up process hundreds of them swarmed into our tent trailer.

After a period of desperately trying to avoid/ignore them and go to sleep, Justin and I ended up getting up with flashlights and proceeded to spend a few hours hunting mosquitos.  The inside of the tent trailer required a lot of scrubbing later, as the walls were smeared with dead mosquitos and streaked with blood.

Poor Maklin -- he didn't yet know how to defend himself and ended up with literally 3-4 dozen bites just on his face.  :(  I didn't have the heart to take pictures.  He was a trooper though.  He woke up during the massacre, but rather than being upset, he just got up and watched (and learned to say, "squitos ... bad!" and slap his hands together ...).  We took turns hunting after he got up, and settled him by reading  No More Elephants over and over (and over and over and over ... we'll never read that book again without thinking of this night!)

Having survived the night -- we ended up spending the next few nights of the reunion in one of the lodge rooms, allowing us to enjoy our time with family.

A decent nap and Maklin was back to being the centre of attention!

The Klaassen Family Reunion happens every 5 years, and is a well organized event.  There is a theme, fantastic mennonite food, a silent auction ... and conference like sessions.  This was my first time attending, and I was not prepared for the amount of 'educational sessions' there were ... very different from reunions I've been to in the past.  But also very interesting!  Kudos to Lulu&Bubba who headed up this years' organizing committee, and did a bang up job, complete with a walking tour to emulate the ancestral Great Trek.

I think I know more about Justin's family than I do about my own now!!  I had the benefit of getting to know how people were related and names and such, as I took on the task of handling all the registration for this years' event.  Looks like I'll be doing that again 5 years from now, as Justin felt very strongly about the need for the younger generation to start attending these reunions (essential for them to continue) and decided he needed to step up and volunteer on the organizing committee.  We've got our work cut out for us, but on the rest of our vacation we wrote several pages of notes and ideas ... now to get the ball rolling and not procrastinate for 4 1/2 years!!  :)

Some of the Jacob Klaassen crew.

A true highlight of the weekend - Maklin got to meet his great-Grandma Klaassen (Great-Oma):

If Maklin was writing this blog, he would probably say the biggest highlight of the weekend was Sunday night supper out ... we ate at a roadside restaurant off the highway (with delicious Greek cuisine).  Getting our order took a long time though ... thank goodness for the chef's kids who entertained Mak: