Instagram

We haven't been very good about doing blog posts while we have been in Taiwan, so we are going to try to do updates on Instagram instead. Not sure how long we will keep that up, but feel free to check it out if you want.

Our new Instagram page is https://www.instagram.com/rebecca_and_joshua_swift

Family Reunions

We had two family reunions at Bear Lake this year. The first one was with the Swift at the end of July. Nathanael and Mary-Anne were in charge of planning it and they did a great job. They found a rental house that was big enough for everyone who wanted to stay in it. Everyone was able to make it except for Isaac and his family and Caleb. That meant that there were 40 of us there. We played a lot of games, went to the beach a couple of times, did some hikes, ate lots of delicious food, and spent a lot of time talking and catching up. It was fun to see everyone, especially those who we do not get to see very much (I think it had been over three years since we had seen Doranda's family - they are living in Japan right now). We can't wait for the next one.

Nathanael and Mary-Anne planned some fun games. This is a game where you try to roll doubles with the dice. If you do roll doubles, then you put on oven mitts and try to unwrap a giant ball of saran wrap. Inside the ball are various toys and treats. This is a picture of the youth game. Rebecca and I had the worst luck with the adult game. Every time we rolled doubles, someone else rolled doubles again before we could even get the gloves on.

The beach was really nice. We were able to drive our cars out onto the beach to section off an area for our group. The sand was great for playing and the water was pretty shallow for a ways so the little children could play in the water on their own. Different families brought paddleboards, canoes, and a giant floating island. We also had bocce, cornhole, and some balls to throw around. The weather was perfect too - not to hot, but just right for swimming and laying out in the sun.

Here is Elliott with Talitha and Lucy.

The hike that we did was beautiful. We walked around a lake up in the mountains. It was a great trail for all of us with some amazing views, wild flowers, and some wild life.

Midway through the reunion Agnes was feeling a little under the weather. Not sure if it was COVID-19 or not, but many at the reunion ended up getting sick and testing positive for COVID-19 after the reunion was over. Agnes was the only one in our family who ended up feeling sick.

Asher and Jonathan looking forward to their raspberry shakes. 

Mary-Anne sent us some pictures that she took. I hope it is okay that I am sharing them here. 

A couple of weeks later we had a reunion with the Little family. It was actually a Meibos family reunion, which is Rebecca's mom's maiden name. There were more than 100 people there and it was Rebecca's parents' turn to organize it all. We stayed at a resort area at the southern part of the lake. Because the rental for the Swift family was at the northern part of the lake, it really felt like two completely different locations. We got to spend a lot of time with Rebecca's parents and siblings as we shared a place within the resort with them. But then, there were several daytime activities with the entire group. Some of our favorite activities were swimming at the pool/hot tub, card games, jet skis, and nine square/cross net. We also really enjoyed the devotional with Grandpa Meibos and Jan and the talent show (although we didn't have a talent to share).  

Somehow I lost all of my pictures from the Meibos reunion, but here are some that others (I think mainly Rebecca's dad) took (I hope they also don't mind that I am posting them here).

Dinner with cousins.

Taking cover from the rain.

Grandpa Meibos and Jan getting ready to share words of wisdom.

Kids relays.

Ready to go on the jet ski. Elliott was the most adventurous on these. He got the fastest and complained the least when we did some more exciting things on it.

Agnes with cousins.

Water trampoline. Mainly used as something to throw people off of.

9 square

All dressed up waiting for the children to chase us around.

Summer Trip Part 10 - Oklahoma and the drive home

After Nashville, we just had 30 hours of driving to do in three days to get home. To split that up, we planned on one night stop in Stillwater (where Rebecca and I went to graduate school and where Julia and Ethan were born) and one night in Denver, where Rebecca has a few aunts and uncles.  

On the way to Stillwater, we stopped by my Uncle Mark and Aunt Angela's house in Tulsa. Mark and Angela where so supportive of us when we lived in Stillwater. They would often visit and treat us to dinner. And we even stayed with them a few times at different holidays and about a month after we sold our house while I was finishing up school. It was always a real treat given that we were poor college students at the time. 

In this visit they were so kind to us and had lots of treats all ready for when we arrived. After chowing down, we all went outside and played a bit. My cousin came over with her two children. They lived in Alaska for part of the time while we lived there, but now they are back in Oklahoma. 

Mark and Angela just recently got this Sinclair dinosaur for their yard. It was pretty cool. I was trying to think where we could put one in our own yard.

They had a fun time riding around on the gator.

They were brave enough to let Julia drive for a while. But, after seeing how that went I am not sure if I am going to be brave enough to let her drive a real car for a while.

Our first stop in Stillwater was our old home. We bought this house about six months after we moved to Stillwater. It was a really nice home. We did some small improvements to it - inside and outside paint, gas heater, new flooring in the back room, and some fixes on the pipes and foundation. We have a lot of good memories about our time in that house and so we were excited to see it again. However, when I looked it up on Google maps, it looked like it was abandoned and falling down. When we pulled up to it though, someone was inside it working on remodeling it. The outside was all a different color. On the inside they completely flipped the floor plan. When we lived there, the bedrooms where on the south side and the living/dining rooms were on the north. But they were in the process of switching that and putting a bathroom between the two bedrooms. The walls were still at the stud level so it was hard to tell what it would eventually look like. Rebecca and I were really glad that someone was putting work into it and it was going to be a beautiful house again. 

After seeing our house, we walked over to a park that we frequently visited when we lived there. There were so many bugs and it was really humid.

For dinner we went to our favorite pizza place from our graduate school days. The pizza was really good. Maybe not as good as I had remembered over all of these years, but probably still my favorite pizza place.

It was fun walking around the Oklahoma State University campus. A lot of it was still the same, including my old building, but there were a lot of new buildings too. It is a really pretty campus.

This one is my old building.

We made one last stop to our favorite ice cream shop before heading to our hotel. Our hotel was right next to this 20+ foot tall statue of Bumblebee. I think there are 9 of these statues in the U.S. and two of them are in Stillwater. We also drove by Eskimo Joes and to a few other spots in town.

Next morning we woke up early and made the long drive to Denver. Luckily the boys didn't mind getting cozy.

In Denver we just had one evening that we stayed before we woke up early and drove again. We enjoyed seeing many of Rebecca's aunts and uncles and cousins. We had a nice dinner with them and then woke up really early in the morning to drive home.

Overall, the drives went really well. There were no major fights (some minor repeated ones though about how far chairs were leaning back and stuff like that), we didn't have any car issues once we got the AC fixed, and we were able to find our way without ever really getting lost (sometimes we took the scenic route though). We did have a really good book series to listen to and I think that helped a lot. The children also enjoyed watching the Avatar series. In the end, I don't think having all eight of us in the car for 80+ hours could have gone any better, and that was a big blessing that helped the trip be as successful as it was.