Photo shoot!

To me the pictures say all the words here.  For those of you who know my amazing sister and her husband you will love the following pictures.  At least I do.  I see too really great people, still totally in love, four kids and is it 13 years? later.

 Love. Love.

 My super goofy sister.

 Best real smile for my sister.

 My favorite of my brother in law.  Full on smile.  Pure happiness.

I love this last one.  You might think this is a dance move, or embrace of some sort.  But for them, it's the beginning of a wrestling move.

Out with the CREAM, in with the ROME

Before we officially let CREAM go the way of all the earth and instate ROME as the new acronym for couples' reunions, we would like to reminisce on the wonderful time that was had, the memories that were made, and the relationships that were treasured. Before we go too far, the acronym ROME stands for Reunion Of Married Ericksons. The best part of the new acronym is that people will think that we go to Italy as a family every other year.

Because Ericksons love ice cream there was not a better way to kick off the reunion than to eat a large portion of good ice cream. Vanderwende's was just the ticket to get our fix. Mary must be her father's daughter because they each got a scoop of black raspberry and coconut ice cream.

While not everyone got to stop at this great place, it was a good pit stop for the much-longer-than-needed-to-be journey.

Upon arrival everyone was happy to get out of the car and stretch their legs, especially the children. For most of the parents there having just one child to chase seemed like a wonderful break. For Eliza and I, it was the normal all-four-of-our-hands-are-full fun. Luckily grandparents love to hold grandchildren.

After the delicious dinner of shish kabobs and some beach time, we had a hilarious time playing Clue-Cha-Phone. It is a combination of the game Clue, charades, and telephone. Three people are initially sent away from the rest of the group. The group picks a place of the murder, weapon of choice, and an unfortunate character.  For example, one of the places was a submarine, one of the weapons was a wet noodle, and one of the characters was Lucille Ball. That is the clue portion. The charade portion starts by inviting the first of the three excused people back in. He picks three people from the group and has each of them perform charades for the one of the three parts of Clue. He must remember them because the telephone part of the game happens as he acts out each of the three parts of Clue for the next person that was sent out. She will then act it out for the final person who tries to guess all three. Needless to say, things can get jumbled or exaggerated through acting, and the results can be very funny. Everyone laughed hard and had a good time. 

While all the activities that were enjoyed could have their own paragraph, the following list with a couple pictures will finish up this post. Everyone can feel free to add to this post by posting their own memories and pictures. 

CREAM

Hour drive each way for church

Sweet Pork Cafe Rio Salad for dinner

Intense Bocce in the back yard

Lego Movie laughs

Outrageously good omelets

Flick-a-stick on the beach

Creating sand sculptures of wonder

Hunting for sand creatures and releasing them into the wild 

Equally intense Beach Bocce

Baby feeding on the beach (it should have been an event for the Beach Olympics)

Going out to eat for scrumptious seafood including deep fat fried octupus known to some as calamari

Flash back FHE and telling memories and future planning

Bad-to-the-bone breakfast burritos

Beach Olympics including events in shot put, disc golf discus, long jumping, and frisbee target shooting

Sweet sand volleyball

Crazy, creamy custard

Lepacious lasagna (I made that word up. If you can't tell I am practicing my adjectives.)

More ice cream--I think this was at least several times a day

Flick-a-stick

Sand sculpting with sculpted people

She found her doppelganger

Searching for the sand bugs

Baby beach feeding

It is always more fun to take pictures of the children

The reunion was a blast. We had a great time laughing and talking and eating (of course eating) and sleeping and playing. The best thing about the whole reunion was to see family, talk to family, hug family, play with family, reminisce with family, laugh with family, and love family. Many memories were made. Relationships were renewed. We were all reminded that families are forever!

Not a Footprint to be seen...LET IT GO!!

So for a whole week, the kids sang "Let it go" from Frozen. They just love that song. When Esther played it for them on the piano they all got excited and went and listened. :) And sang along too of course.
One night while we were eating ice cream they started singing it. I changed the lyrics and Sienna, as cute a a button, tells me that I was singing it wrong and then starts singing it herself. (We didn't get that part on camera, though I tried to replicate it)  Sienna would sing the first line... 'Snow glows white on a mountain...not a footprint to be seen' Then she would sing the 'let it go' chorus. And then back to that first line again. :) It was quite cute. Eli argued a little with one of the girls (i don't remember it might have been Kira or Sienna) . He said that he was Elsa not her. They just loved it...

so without further ado I give you Frozen,
by the Parent-free quintet. :)

A Week Without Parents

So a whole week of having the kids....

Now what?

Well... I arrived at the Denver Airport and instantly received a phone call from Esther telling me that they had just arrived and were waiting by the baggage area. I had yet to disembark, so I told her I would call once I was closer. We met up and I was amazed, as always, at how big Esther and James were. We ate some nice snacks from Mom as we waited for Mary and Glen. They arrived soon and we found them at their car with cute Liam. After a few last words of advice (Glen wanted me to water the corn and spray the weeds), we were left on our own.

The trip to Canon City was pretty uneventful even though I did take the wrong turn a couple of times trying to follow the GPS. We arrived to see Linda Lee with the crowd of kids. We helped her get ready and she left us some delicious dinner. We ate and went to bed with some customary books and a family prayer.

During the whole time I was there I found that it was fairly easy to maintain a routine of food, sleep, and prayer and scriptures, but that all this was such a concentrated effort as to allow for minimal learning and growth...

Mary reminded me that Kira was expecting the tooth fairy and the tooth fairy didn't come until sunday night I think. Friday night and saturday night I had forgotten, but Kira remembered in the morning. She didn't say anything much, but she did notice. I believe the tooth fairy gave her a whole dollar in assorted coins.

The first and last thing that Eli would say to me after waking up and before going to sleep was if he could have some food because he was hungry. :) I think he must have some of Uncle John and Uncle Joseph. We would put everyone to sleep for the night and 5 or 10 minutes later he would come out and ask for food.

Kira was a big help and was responsible and mature. She would help some of the other kids read scriptures when we read in the mornings.

Tuesday we went on a hike with Alesha Jenks and her two sons, Stone and... i forget the older son's name, from the ward. It was fun. Lydia and Eli lagged behind at first until Eli started following Rhett. Lydia thought it was great fun to carry Kira's small backpack with a water bladder. She liked to drink out of it and walk along. Kira was quite intrigued with finding gold in the rocks as we had seen a father and son in a stream doing some gold panning. Rhett loved to pick up sticks and was crying and sad when we had to leave some in the woods. Alesha has a tradition of picking something up on the trail and coming back and putting it in a jar with a picture of the hike, so everyone was supposed to pick up something along the way that would fit in a jar. Rhett, I think wanted to put a beer bottle cap in his, and Eli, I think unless I am getting these two stories mixed up, just picked up a rock from the parking lot once we got back and asked what they had picked up. :) We saw a large owl and most of the hike was in the shade of the trees along a little stream. Esther had the opportunity to show off some forestry knowledge, but she had forgotten some of it. haha

The kids sure can eat a lot. I don't think there was a meal that we prepared with any significant leftovers. They just ate it all, and it was a little bit of a challenge estimating how much they would eat. We did buy some fruit and more milk to last through the week. I think that we drank 6 or 7 gallons.

Kira, Rhett, and Sienna had swim lessons and they loved them. Sienna especially was very disappointed when we didn't go one day because it was a little rainy.

Alesha invited us over for dinner one of the days. We had some delicious burritos and some chocolate brownies for dessert. Sienna especially loves to go there and get her fingernails painted. When we left this time, Kira, Lydia, Sienna, and Esther all had their nails painted. :)

On Sunday the Smith's invited us over for dessert. Bishop Smith was the new bishop. He spoke some spanish and was really excited to speak with me. I think that was the first thing he did when he came home was to come talk to me in Spanish. He didn't go eat dessert even though it was his favorite, chocolate cake. He said he hadn't eaten well because he had been "tan nervioso" so nervous about his new calling that he had lost some weight.  Their oldest daughter Hannah has gone on some dates with Jared and Esther was happy to see her at church and later at their house... Hannah also watched the kids on Saturday when James, Esther, and I returned to the airport.

Thursday James, Esther, and I watched the lego movie after putting the kids to bed. James requested a special night and he chose the movie as well. He wanted us to be able to quote it back and forth.

We ate ice cream a couple of times and we watched Swiss Family Robinson with popcorn one night. We grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and another day we grilled chicken. :)

There were the normal accidents and such that you might expect from such a crowd. It was very fun to get to know everyone better and see their personalities developing. I really appreciate all the hard work that Mary and Linda Lee and Glen and Ben do to help their children learn and grow in the gospel. :)






This picture is Saturday morning. We went out to Mary and Glen's property to see if there was enough water to water the rows of corn. They have a rope swing that we played on. Lydia crossed behind the swinger one time and before we could stop him, Eli crossed too, but in front of the person who was swinging. :) He got bonked in the head, but was soon recovered. We saw that there wasn't enough water in the canal, so we played Simon Says in the little old house on the property. Everyone had to have a turn and by the end everyone had the concept down. Rhett was quick to recognize a command that didn't have Simon Says. Sienna always said "Simon Says" after her command. She would tell everyone, "Simon Says walk." and then she would say "Enough!"..."Simon Says." Then she would say, "Go back to the beginning." because inevitably she never did say "enough" fast enough or with the right wording so that the kids would stop, and they would have crossed the whole room. She wouldn't be able to tell them what to do anymore except to go back and start again... She learned this from the times that we had sent people back for not following the Simon Says. We flew kites on saturday at the school. We also played some baseball there. It was fun and the kids enjoyed it.

Here is a picture of when we got in. We were sitting on a bench snacking. :)

I fell asleep after we got to Mary and Glen's house from the airport. Esther was kind enough to record the whole incident with a picture. hahah

Here is the rabbit that we caught. That night I let it go because it was really not eating anything and I hoped it would find its mom. The next morning, upon seeing the empty box, Esther was a little sad and in response to her question I told her that I had let it go. Then a short time later Kira came to the kitchen and started getting celery. I asked her why and she said it was to take to the rabbit. I thought that she just hadn't seen the empty box and I let her go. Then I went downstairs a short while later and I saw in the same window well with the snake, the same baby rabbit, AGAIN! I was nonplussed. We went outside and we saw a bigger rabbit that we assumed to the the mother rabbit running off. We did the same shenanigan with the shovel and this time we let the little rabbit go, but towards the same direction we had seen the other rabbit running in hopes of them meeting up. We didn't see him again.

 Another picture of the snake that we never took out, but when we looked for him the day after the bunny had fallen in for the second time, we didn't find him. He did like to bury himself in the rocks, but we tried digging them up and we still didn't find him.

 Here is another snake we saw in the backyard. We are pretty sure this one was a bull snake.

James was the ball, punching bag, and wrestling buddy of all his nieces and nephews. He always entertained them with all sorts of games and was very creative and inventive. He was helpful when it was time to make dinner or some other meal. Esther and I usually worked on the meal while he played with the kids.

\\

I think it was Saturday morning as we were finishing up breakfast, when Kira came running upstairs and told us that "The snake is going to eat the bunny downstairs!!!" Esther, James, and I looked at each other in confusion and wonder. James volunteered to go down and check it out. Then the next thing Esther and I hear is, "Joshua, Hurry come with me!" So then we look at each other and know that something must be going on. There was a snake and a young rabbit in the window well of the house. It was clear that the snake had no intention of eating the rabbit right away, mostly because I don't think it was big enough to do so. I blocked the snake with a shovel and Esther reached out the window to haul in the rabbit. We put it in a cardboard box with newspaper and some vegetables to eat. I thought the snake might be a rattlesnake because the snake's tail would shake as it got more and more excited. It wasn't coiled up however. It tried several times to climb the side, but it wasn't long enough to reach the top, though not by much. 

We enjoyed baseball games. A couple games were canceled due to weather, but here is one that Kira had. She hit 3 times and the third time she got a hit. She was able to run home off of a hit from a teammate. Go Kira!!

One day we went to the Library and the kids got their faces painted from a lady who was there. Kira was a dog. Rhett was a Ninja Turtle. Sienna got a rainbow. Lydia got a horse and Eli got superman. James got a Y on his Cheek. The library was quite comfy. They had clothes there for dress up. They also had a puppet theater that we did two or three shows in. One was about making friends in the jungle. Esther, James, and I played checker and we read books of course.