Flynn reunion Bear Lake - Braden's Graduation

I attended Relief Society activity and the focus was on writing our stories. One of the suggestions was to write from the eyes of a child so I thought I’d give it a try imagining what 4 little 5 & 6 year old girl cousins might say. Before I do so I’ll give some background and setting. We were up at Bear Lake, Utah in a large rented home that housed 30 of us. The weather was much better than expected with little bouts of rain but mostly breezy sunshine.

Flynn Family Reunion- Bear Lake 2011

Thursday: We each arrived with our stuff in our hands as we explored the beach house and found our rooms. We ran upstairs and played with the knobs on the log bed. Oops! They fell out – hey, we wondered if there were more that we could take out. This was a game. We could build things with it.



We heard someone coming, quick hide them under the bed. Caught! We didn’t know we couldn’t play with them. The adults took them away. We were just having fun.

We raced down the stairs and out to the back yard. The water was not too far away but there was a lot of grassy water first. We saw the sand pile and ran to play with the toys that Natalie had brought in their boat.


It was dinner time and Grandma and Grandpa weren’t there yet because they were picking up Mike and Jen and Braden, Adam, Conner, and Brook from the airport. They were coming back from Korea. Brook’s our age and friend. We wanted her to play with us. Natalie & Jeremy fixed tacos. We love tacos. Some cheese fell on the floor but no one seemed to care.


At last they were here and Grandma and Grandpa were told there had been a room change. They had been assigned the master bedroom on the main floor, because their children didn’t think that they should have to share a bunk bed. With the room came one of the communal TV’s & DVD players.

Because of the change Ashley & John with Sage & Kody were moving downstairs to the bunk bed and Robert & Sandra & family were moving upstairs to the twin bedroom. Jen and Mike and family had the big room upstairs. Everything was crowded as they brought in all of their stuff and changed the rooms. We were told to stay out of the way and to go outside.


We’re going to have a party for Braden’s graduation.

Grandma tried to put on Braden a funny flat blue hat. It was really John’s graduation cap but Grandma said she was borrowing it for pictures because it was blue. Braden was too tall and had to squat down in order for Grandma to reach. Grandma’s short.

The hat kept falling off his head. We laughed and Braden gave a big grin.
He got a nice big box with a watch in it from his mom and dad. Grandma gave him a card, but Braden couldn’t read it because she didn’t write it very well.

Maybe Grandma should go back to school.
Grandma had a slide show with everyone’s pictures on it, with lots of pictures of Braden when he was really young until now.

She showed that Sage graduated from Pre-school; Elisabeth, Sierra, and Brook graduated from Kindergarten; Conner, Thai, and Madison graduated from Elementary School; Christian graduated from Junior High, and Braden from High School.

We had cake and got to choose chocolate frosting and chocolate cake or chocolate frosting and white cake or white frosting and chocolate cake or white frosting and white cake. There was even seconds and thirds.
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We didn’t want to quit playing with each other but after the grownups set up the beds in the family room, we nestled down into our sleeping bags and soon fell asleep. The big boys stayed up all night playing games.




Friday: Sierra was the first to wake up and she woke up Elisabeth.

Brook was buried inside her bag sound asleep.

Sage had slept in her mom’s room but she was quick to get up to play.



Jeremy went out early to fish and caught two BIG trout. Sage and Grandma got to watch him clean them out.


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Brook’s mom and dad made breakfast but we liked eating cereal, that Grandma brought, before everyone was ready.

Let’s go in the hot tub. “No,” said the adults because we were going to go to the beach. Pack up your things.