PFR 2012 - Day 1

The Perkins Family Reunion 2012 was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday over Easter weekend. I decided to host this year, and through the help of my sister-in-law, I discovered a great Reunion Rental Home called Three Peaks in St. Anthony, Idaho. I talked to my mom about it last summer, and we researched it online and found out that during the off-season, it's a lot cheaper to rent. So, since we usually get together as a family for Easter, we decided to combine Easter with our annual family reunion and have it at the Reunion Home. The house was absolutely amazing! There were 9 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, a dining room with 4 tables and seating for 40, a kitchen with a commercial-sized fridge and freezer and 2 stoves, a giant living room with a big fireplace, a game room, a gym from a converted 3-car garage, and a family room with a big TV. It was the first time we've ever ALL been together: all the siblings, spouses, and grandkids (at all of our previous 4 reunions, somebody was always missing).

The first day of the reunion, Friday, we all drove to the Reunion Home from different locations/directions. Lisa and Mack and their boys flew out from Virginia the week before and had been touring around Montana, so they came from the Northeast. We drove in from Salmon on the Northwest. And my parents and other brothers and sisters drove up from Utah on the south side. We began arriving around 3:00, and all got there in intervals until about 7:00.

I broke up the meals into assignments; each family unit picked which meal they wanted to serve, and they were in charge of choosing their menu, purchasing the food for it, cooking it, serving it, and cleaning it up. I signed up for Friday night's meal. I made Corn Chowder, and cooked Rhodes rolls to go with it. I made it all the morning before we left because I didn't want to have to bring all the ingredients and make it after we had arrived there. So I toted it down in ice cream buckets in coolers, and reheated it on the stove there. I made the rolls that morning as well. The dessert for my meal was the birthday cake that I made for my dad, whose birthday was that same day, and I baked the chocolate mini cupcakes after we arrived. I was glad I decided to make soup, because it stayed warm, and as people were arriving, they could eat a hot bowl of it.

After dinner, and after everyone arrived, we sang to my dad, and ate the dessert, and he opened a few presents. That evening was spent familiarizing ourselves with the new space: the kids played in all the different play-areas of the house, the families picked which bedroom they wanted, everyone unloaded food & luggage from their cars, and put things where they needed to go. There was lots of hugs, laughter, and conversing. We were so happy to be together in such a fun place!

The front of the house

Each room was decorated in a theme. This was our family's room:

This was the game room. There was a ping-pong table, air-hockey table, foozball table, another game table (I can't remember the name of it), and a seating area. Also, on one side of the room was a slide to go down to the bunk room underneath, and on the other side of the room was a monkey-ladder to climb back up from the bunk room.

This is the Bunk Room downstairs (right under the game room), with wall-to-wall built-in bunkbeds. It also included lots of soft-play building blocks, a few boxes of toys, and a bathroom, and of course the slide and monkey ladder.

This is the gym that was previously a garage. We loved this room! It was well-insulated, so the kids could make all the noise they wanted, but we couldn't hear it from inside. There was two entrances to the house from the gym: one upstairs by the kitchen that also included a slide back down into the gym, and an entrance into the family room downstairs. There were wall chalkboards, basketball backboards, bikes, trikes, and other activities to play in this room.

 This is the entrance to the house. It's a split-entry, so when you walk it, you can either go downstairs to the family room or upstairs to the game room.

(Downstairs)

(Upstairs)

This is the family room downstairs, it was the central location for all the bedrooms. There was a few couches, a chair, a bench, and the only TV in the house, where we played lots of wii.

 

And this is part of the giant living room upstairs. There was a nice, large sectional leather couch, a big fireplace, a piano, and a well-used pool table.

My boys loved the house as much as I did! The entire first night, they kept saying things like "This house is the BEST! We want to live here! This house is so much FUN!  Let's move here!". And since my parents and two sisters arrived before we did, and Aunt Tawna answered the door, Kanyon kept thinking that the house was hers. He kept saying "I love Aunt Tawna's new house!". The house made us all happy; it was such a great place to host our 2012 family reunion!