Zavoral Family Reunion 2018

The Zavoral Family Reunion of 2018 was held the week of 4th of July at our home. Yes, that's right. We convinced the entire family to come visit us in Minnesota all at the same time! We are told it was a big success, and Jeremy and I had a lot of fun hosting it. 

Having the reunion was a great motivator for us to get a lot of projects done around the house, like getting a new roof, deep cleaning the tile floors, shampooing carpets, vetting junk from every room and rearranging furniture and toys. 

We had 21 people total at the house, and we were able to give every family their own room! Most of my baby stuff is gone, so I rounded up 4 cribs and 3 high chairs from friends in town. Thanks to our our AirBnB business, we actually had enough pillows, towels and sheets for everyone without having to buy more. It was surprisingly not stressful to host so many people at once.

The official reunion days were July 2-4. But we were lucky to have people come early and people leave late, so we had company from June 28 (Tanner's birthday) - July 7. Everyone was together for about 20 minutes on Sunday afternoon, when Zakina arrived right before Matt had to leave (his work schedule would not allow him to stay for the full reunion). So we quickly tried to get some family photos while everyone was together. It was incredibly promptu since a few hours before we didn't even know we would all be together at the same time. We all gathered on the porch. And then we realized we needed someone to take the picture!

So we started waving people down as they drove past our house. And it actually worked!! A coworker of Jeremy's saw us and pulled over to help take pictures.

The Whole Zavoral Clan!

Steve and Katie were excited to yell out, "Everybody say cheese!!" Then they yelled out "Everybody say, Katie's pregnant!" And here's the subsequent reactions...We were all so excited for her!!

Some fun cousin shots after the big announcement!

Saturday and Sunday night, we had a fun jam session in the basement. Jeremy played drums, and Jon brought his guitar and mic equipment for everyone to sing. Alainea was with us these nights, and fell in love with the little girls and enjoyed watching how crazy our family is! We took everyone to 1910 restaurant and got trapped in a torrential downpour on the way home, too, so that was crazy.

Kateve got a really cool rental car to take them from the airport to our home, so people went out for joy rides before it was time to return the car.

Sunday at church was really fun. I got to teach music time in primary with not only my own boys and Alainea, but also with Hazel, Brooke and Carly! Gramz helped sub for us in nursery, where Ethan and Lucy got to play together. After church, Tanner helped cut pita bread for our yummy Meditarranian food for Sunday dinner. Katie and Melissa helped me get everything all put together for our first big Sunday meal!

Can you see the tree climbers?

Five kiddos in this shot! Dallin and Tanner had so much fun showing the girls the best climbing routes on the climbing tree.

Sunday evening, there was a free concert at the HHH. The grandparents, Brooke, Carly and Hazel came with Jeremy and our kids to see it.

After kids were in bed, we enjoyed visiting on our back porch. My friend Leighsa let us borrow a bunch of her flowers and outdoor chairs, which helped make everything look so nice!

Monday Morning, July 2, the official reunion began! I took input from everyone ahead of time to see what activities they would like to do at the reunion, and then put together a schedule and meal plan for the 3 days. Monday morning breakfast was Spam and Eggs. The kids were excited to all eat together. 

Then we headed off to the SPAM MUSEUM!

After the museum, we ate a picnic lunch at Todd Park. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, there was plenty of shade and plenty of fun things to do at the park. The kids played on the playground, some dads played frizbee golf while the moms rested in the shade. 

I brought little spray bottles for water fighting. That turned out to be a big hit. The kids loved spraying each other with them, and then discovered how fun it is to spray Grandpa Z. Soon all the dads were playing water fighting, too!

Everyone had free time for the afternoon up until dinner. This was a great chance for everyone to bond and socialize in their own way.

For dinner on Monday night, we got to eat at the church. I hired a family in the ward to prepare and serve all the food for us so that we could all have one meal where none of us had to do any work. It was so nice! We simply showed up, ate, had family home evening and left. Well, some people helped clean up a little, but then we remembered we didn't have to, and that was cool.

Grandma Zavoral planned and prepared a family home evening lesson and activities for us. She created a scavenger hunt all through the building for the kids, and had a craft. The lesson was about being obedient. She also had a part where everyone had to tell every single person in the family that we loved them. It was super fun! To top off the evening, we had mini red-white-blue fruit pizzas for dessert.

Tuesday, July 3 was another day full of adventure. The clan went to the Nature Center and enjoyed the museum, holding a real snake, and doing the outdoor sacenger hunt!

We had lunch at home and instead of having freetime, everyone voted to go swimming at the public pool! Grandma and Grandpa paid for all our tickets, which was super nice. It was fun to watch all the kids enjoying the water and sunshine. They loved it when the aunts and uncles pretended to be crocodiles in the kiddy pool.

Uncle Jeremy with baby Dot.

I got my baby fix by the side of the pool!

Every single person in this pool is from our family.

All the cousins, except the baby!

Grandma and Grandpa did a ton of swimming with the kids. They even went down the water slides and off the diving boards!

Everyone came home and chilled until dinner time. I mowed the lawn and had some helpers!

For dinner this night, we ate taco salad. We had all kinds of yummy things to put on it. And I arranged the food to look 4th of July and festive, but I guess those photos weren't on my phone. At bedtime, I got to read the rebel girl book to my nieces.

That night, and every night that week, Jeremy and I got to sleep with Tanner and Dallin in their room. It was really important to Tanner to be able to sleep in his own room and to have his special things untouched by guests. I made sure to honor that request for him. (He was also convinced that all the noise from the baby and toddlers would make him go deaf, but luckily his therapist worked through that with him before the reunion). It ended up being a fun bonding opportunity for the four of us to be together each night. 

The 4th of July was on Wednesday, and it was a super fun day!! 

We ate crepes for breakfast at home, let the kids leisurely play, and got ready for the parade. Jeremy, Tanner, Dallin and I rode our bikes to the parade spot that friends from church saved for our entire clan. Tanner's bike had some trouble on the way there, but we eventually made it. 

Dang, did we luck out on spots for the parade! Thank you to the Echols family for saving us spots. We got to be in the shade right next to the road. 

The people in the parade had lots of cool things to throw at us in addition to candy: water bottles, bananas, pencils, bouncy balls, soda holders, balloons, sunglasses, flags, and even otter pops and ice cream sandwiches! That was really cool. We saw lots of friends in the parade. As usual, it was fun to see all the trucks and hear all the music. Our town is funny in that it lets every group known to man walk in the parade, so it is also long--the good ole small town American way!

We were so excited to see Alainea and Aleighcia marching in the parade!

Zoey became my little buddy during the parade. She wouldn't leave my side! What a special treat for me!

After the parade, everyone was on their own for lunch. Some went to Burger King, some went home, and we stayed at the Echol's house to eat with friends from church.

After lunch, some dark clouds rolled in. We tried to beat the storm, but we were too late. Luckily, Grandma and Grandpa were nearby and took the boys into their car with their bikes. Jeremy and I decided to rough it through the downpour. We got half way home and needed to take a break because the water was coming down super hard. We rested under the Ekin's tree house and waited for the rain to let up. About 20 minutes later, the rain let up a little, so we decided to make our way home. We were soaked through and through. Pretty fun adventure, and nice to have some alone time with Jeremy during the crazy week.

When we got home, it was free time for everyone. Jeremy and Steve played catch in the rain.

The kids looked through their candy stashes from the parade.

Grandma showed the kids how to make American windmills.

People played and ran and laughed.

Melissa got some of the girls to shuck the corn for the BBQ.

And cousins bonded.

There was something wrong with cooking the meat, so everyone was trying to help and talk about ways to cook it while the kids ran around. I thought it was funny how all the grown-ups were on the deck together talking about all the ways to try making the grill work, or whatever it was. It seemed like the more people helped, the worse the problems got, haha. But luckily, the food turned out really yummy. We had BBQ stake and chicken.

Jeremy and I got to the Bandshell park ahead of everyone to set up camp for watching the fireworks.

While waiting for the big firework show, we all had a blast catching fireflies, playing chase, and setting off sparklers! Grandpa Z brought some small fireworks and put on a show right there in one of the fields of the park for us, too!! It was so so so much fun!

It was really fun for me to show the cousins how to catch fireflies.

Everyone loved the city firework show. In fact, Zach wrote to our newspaper to say that it was the best he had ever seen! I agree. Austin does a super job with their 4th of July shows. Then we headed off back to the house with lots of sleepy children. Several of us grown-ups stayed up to try bottle rockets on our front porch. We were like little kids, causing trouble and hoping the neighbors wouldn't notice. Good times.

The following morning, all the kiddos had a dance party! Also on this day, we had to say goodbye to Zakina's family. We got to do lots of low-key activities with the rest of the cousins, which included fishing at the river across the street and at East Side Lake, playing with baby Dorothy, eating out at El Patron, running in the sprinklers and slip and slide, and having a water balloon toss game.

It was super heartwarming to see my boys enamored by the baby and their toddler cousins.

On Friday, Dallin woke up with this lovely mosquito bite. He gets reactions like this pretty often, we think it is skeeter's syndrome. Luckily, the swelling goes away after a few days.

Firday, we said goodbye to Kateve and kids. Melijon went up to the cities to explore a place from Jon's youth. We took the grandparents to Mystery Cave and Forrestville State Park. We had such a fun time exploring the cave and the pioneer town.

More fun times with baby Dot.

Saturday, July 7 was our last day with the remaining Zavoral people. We went to the park with Melijon's kids while the grown-ups packed.

We had so much fun with the Zavoral Clan and the Zavoral grandparents at our home for the 4th of July!! It was the best way to spend my favorite holiday. It went so incredibly well that we would do it again in a heartbeat.

Seven is Odd

Tanner turned SEVEN on Thursday, June 28, 2018. Between having the Zavoral grandparents, Uncle Matt, a little league baseball game, and an Odd Squad party with friends, Tanner had a very "odd"-some birthday!

Grandma and Grandpa Zavoral showed up just in time for a birthday dinner at Tanner's choice restaurant, McDonalds. Uncle Matt was with us too! Tanner was in heaven.

Then we headed to his baseball game. Everyone was so excited!

Grandpa was very proud of his grandson!

Three generations of baseball lovers.

Tough guys.

At home that evening, we lit up our rhubarb crumble for Tanner to blow out seven candles.

The next day was Friday, party day! Tanner began planning the party and his birthday servce project months ahead of time. We decided to try making an Odd Squad Party since he loves the TV show Odd Squad on PBSkids. Tanner made this sign all by himself! He cut out the letters from the blue to make negative space and then glued it on a red background. I helped him hang it up.

For his birthday service project, Tanner decided to collect books from his own library and from all his friends. He wanted to give them to places in town that needed books. We spent several days going shelf by shelf through our home-library to select books that we didn't need or that were duplicates of what we already had. Some books that Tanner chose to give away were brand new and others were well loved. He made this table for the party where books could be placed in leau of presents. His friends were so generous with bringing books to donate! We ended up collecting over 110 books!

Jeremy, Dallin and I gave Tanner 7 balloons, a cool party banner, and an ice cream cake.

We were able to make odd squad badges for all the "agents."

We had almost everything ready, with 40 minutes to spare. Then Tanner checked to make sure we had birthday hats. I had completely forgotten about birthday hats, they aren't really on my radar anymore since my kids in recent years complain about them hurting and not staying on. Tanner was pretty upset and anxious about it. So grandpa jumped right up and said "Let's go to the store and get some!" That sure was nice of him! 

When the kids arrived, we watched Odd Squad, mostly to help the kids that have never seen the show, so that they could understand what our party was all about.

Jeremy was a huge help to our friends.

Then we made Odd Squad gadgets. Gadgets are any kind of device that an agent can use to solve cases of oddness and to fight off odd villains. This activity was a big hit, and probably Tanner's favorite part of the party! I brought out all kinds of art supplies from the garage, including old juice containers, cardboard, tin caps, jewels, bottle caps, colored paper, piped wire and sticky foam. We had three hot-glue stations to keep things moving along. The kids--er, I mean, agents-- were really creative, and everyone was able to complete their project.

While the agents made their gadgets, I told them that there were reports of some villains on the loose, including Sassy Grassy, who likes to steel things and hide them in grass, and Lazer Blazer who likes to annoy people with his lazer gun and protect all his posessions with lazer beams.

Our little ODD SQUAD

Special note for Tanner when he's older: The subsequent events during the party were created by your mother, including the creation of the villains and their evil motives. It was very fun to put these odd cases together for you! 

As we got ready to test our gadgets outside, we noticed that something VERY ODD happened! All of our shoes were gone!! The person that took them left behind a bunch of grass on the porch. We figured it must be the villain Sassy Grassy. We went looking around in the grass for clues! The kids were flipping out with excitement!

We kept finding shoes laying everywhere, and we noticed that they were layed out in groups of seven. Hmmm, that's odd! But even odder was how we could not find all the shoes! After scraping through all the lawn around the house, we determined that most of the shoes were still missing!

Then we spotted her. Sassy Grassy was trying to get away with the rest of our shoes!! (Oddly enough, she looked a lot like Gramma Z!)

All the agents tried to use their gadgets on her. Tanner yelled some ideas, and since no one could hear him, he had a meltdown (which I had anticipated). It took a few minutes, but we were able to get everyone to listen to both Sassy and Tanner. He made Sassy Grassy freeze with his special freezing gadget, and all the agents ordered Sassy to give us the rest of our shoes. She said that she locked them in her car, and the only way we could get them was to open her lockbox that contained her car keys. She said the code was 3 numbers that add up to seven, so she was sure we would never figure it out. 

Well, we had very smart agents, and we had notes from our investigation! The shoes she put in the grass were laid out in groups that added up to seven, so we just tried those numbers combinations, and one of them worked!! The agents opened the lockbox, got the keys, and were able to get our shoes from the car. Sassy Grassy slinked away, very upset! We all came inside, tired and hot, since it was 93 degrees out. Just as I hoped, all the odd squad agents said they wanted juice boxes to drink. (The lead agent in the TV show loves juice boxes).
I tried to find the stash of juice boxes that I had bought for the party, but they were missing! This was very odd. Alainea said she saw someone take the juice boxes, but there was flashing lights and lazers everywhere, so she couldn't tell who it was. She saw the lazers got into the basement. Everyone freaked out! "It's LAZER BLAZER, get your gadgets, hurry, hurry!!" Tanner could hardly wait for everyone to join him as he went down to investigate the basement. At the bottom of the stairs we found the villain standing in front of a giant lazer trap!! On the other side of the trap were our juice boxes! The kids were screaming with excitement and tried to use their gadgets to make Lazer Blazer go away.

It took a few minutes to calm everyone down and dry some birthday tears so that we could hear the villain speak. Lazer Blazer, who oddly looked a lot like Grandpa Z, said that he was going to drink all of our juice boxes. The kids yelled, "Nooooo!" The villain explained that the only way through the lazers is to sneak through openings that form the same shape as a juice box- rectangles. He was sure that none of us could do that. After we fixed the lazers that zapped some kids for going in too soon, we let each agent take their turn going through the trap as carefully as they could. Tanner went through first to show the way through all the rectangle openings. He had fun drinking juice boxes while his friends came through to join him. Lazer Blazer was pretty bummed that a bunch of kid-agents got into his lair. Since his lazers couldn't stop them, he told the kids to use their gadgets to destroy the lazers. As you can guess, the children had a lot of fun doing that!! 

Then it was time to celebrate their success in defeating the villains with juice boxes and ice-cream-cake!! Everyone got to drink at least three juice boxes, so that was cool. The cake said, "7 is odd, happy birth-odd-day Tanner!"

When we sang "happy birthday" to Tanner, people wore the hats and held the noise makers that Grandpa got. I told the kids to wait until the end of the song to blow on their noise makers, and as soon as we sang the last note, the kids blew those suckers as loud as they could!! It was really funny because we decided not to tell them to stop. They just kept blowing and blowing and blowing until their own little ears couldn't stand it. Everyone got a great laugh out of that!

Tanner and the kids loved the ice-cream-cake. While eating, they had a good time visiting. Then, some played in the basement and some watched more Odd Squad shows until their parents came to get them. OOFTA! We were all pooped by the time everyone left!

Tanner's party was also goodbye time to these good friends. They had to move out of state the next day. We sure miss them!

In the days following, Tanner and I sorted and delivered all the books that he collected. The places he chose to donate included: the Hormel Historic Home, Spam Museum Book Knook, Rachel's Hope, the sharing libraries outside of three schools (Woodson Kindergarten Center, Sumner Elementary and the Community Learning Center), the Reader's Cafe at the summer school lunchroom, and a friend with many needs that doesn't have books at home.

It was a joy to see Tanner think carefully through which books should go to which location, and to see his eyes light up with excitement at each delivery. At the Spam Museum, Tanner told the worker in the most polite voice he had, "Um, it's my birthday, and I want to give you these books because I noticed some of the ones you have are kind of damaged. And I chose farm and pig books for you since this is the Spam Museum." The Spambassadors were really excited about this and Tanner left the place beaming. :) 

When we gave away the last batch of books, Tanner enthusiastically suggested, "Now let's find MORE books to give away!"

During this past year, Tanner grew more than 3 inches, and is now wearing 7/8 clothes and size 1 shoes. He also grew in other ways, like learning how to read, make new friends and play lots of songs by ear on the piano. He got better at doing chores like vacuuming, scrubbing toilets and rotating laundry. While Alainea was with us throughout the year, Tanner experienced what it's like to have an older sibling. He went on his first trip outside of the USA to Costa Rica and learned to speak some Spanish phrases. 

Throughout the year, he went from loving Ninja Turtles to loving Odd Squad and Wild Kratts. Tanner continues to love all sports, science, and art (esp drawing). He still keeps busy by building his own creations out of legos, paper, sand, wood, music, and pretty much any odds-and-ends he can find. He likes spending time talking to us, thinking of gifts for us and others and planning activities for us to do together. He continues to have an impecable memory. This year, he has gotten really good at arguing a point of thought and shows quite a competative streak at times. He still loves to dance, and has some pretty silly and cool moves. 

Tanner has grown in his spirituality, too. While he doesn't always love church, he loves learning stories and lessons from the Bible and Book of Mormon. His prayers are always very thoughtful, and he often prays on his own. He likes talking about deep doctrine and asks questions about the gospel that I didn't ask until I was a teenager. He has started reading the scriptures on his own and is excited about preparing to be baptised. I hope he will come to know more this year how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love him.

Tanner has made a lot of progress this year with his therapist to tackle his anxieties. As a family we are always learning new ways to help him (and each other) deal with anxiety. Tanner acts like any other kid when he is well-fed, well-rested and nothing changes in "the plan" for the day. When those things are not all in place, it doesn't take much to trigger a meltdown or panic attack, and the struggle is very real for him (and us!). We've found that social stories, breathing, talking through his worries, helping him dispel lies that his brain tries to tell him, and helping him filter through his postive and negative thoughts have been really powerful tools for him. Tanner also benefits from our weighted blanket and trampoline, body squishes, magnesium supplements, and vitamin D supplements. From time to time,  he will actually lay down for a rest with the vibrating snake, but this is rare since relaxing does not come easy for him one bit. For a few days, he felt like his 7th birthday was the worst day of his life because of the couple times where no one could hear him when solving the cases. I did a "filtering our thoughts" activity with him, and that helped Tanner remember all the awesome things that happened during his party. 

Tanner is a wonderful blessing in our lives. He is a thinker, creator, and a natural leader. He is passionate about many, many things in life. Best of all, he is MY son!