Life as normal... almost.

Goooo Dodgers!!!

Well, camp ended on Saturday. There were 54 of us in the house for the week, and only some went home - including D... miss you D!!!! - and there's still like 30 of us here... so onto mini-camp now.


Saturday night Grandpa took all of us to see "Hancock" and then for pizza. Hancock was an interesting movie. Wouldn't recommend it for kids, but we didn't know that going into it. Oh well.

Monday found Uncle Bob taking a bunch of the kids, including Chad, to Magic Mountain. It was INCREDIBLY hot... and the lines were INCREDIBLY long... but Chad had a great time. He had never been there before, and is finally starting to appreciate roller coasters, so he loved every minute of it.


Monday night, 30 people were headed to the Dodger game. Dodgers' vs. Atlanta Braves, and the Dodgers' won! Yippee! Everyone had a great time... and I guess that when you buy 30 tickets at one time you are considered a group, so on the tickets it said "Huckvale Family Outing", and they even put it up on the big screen a bunch of times during the game. Everyone loved that!


Tuesday was a pool/hang out day. Our friend, Kathy Morrison, and her kids, Bailey, Shannon, McKenna and Evan, came over, as well as My Amanda, who I always enjoy seeing. We also lost 11 more of the family members on Tuesday. The house is getting more empty, but there are still a bunch of us here!


Wednesday Uncle Bob braved the amusement parks again. This time he took a group to Knott's Berry Farm. Luke went with him, and they all had a GREAT time! They had so much fun! It was much cooler, and much fewer people were there.


As well, Chad had his friend, Liam, come over. He's known Liam since the 1st grade, and although they don't talk that much during the year, every time they get together, it's like they've never been apart. What a great friendship they have!


Thursday was another hang at home day. Us women decided to work on our "savage tans" - yeah, right! - and basically just hung out at the pool, playing and having fun with the kids. Later in the day the kids decided to give us all pedicures with wonderful foot rubs which was very nice.


Friday was just a running around day. Picked up Liam again, did a bunch of errands, swam, played... and lost Bob and his kids. They headed back to Washington yesterday afternoon. Won't get there until sometime today, but they're on their way. And now it's Saturday, lost Susie this morning, so now it's just us and Christine and some of her kids and Jon and Nancy, but they all go home tomorrow. Chad and Luke are going over to Liam's house to play, and me and the girls are headed on a girl's day, going to the American Girl store at The Grove for a tea party. Will post pics later.

Friday Fun.

Friday morning found us at a "car show" - Grandpa's car show. You see, Grandpa Huckvale likes to "collect" classic cars (he's trying to emulate Jay Leno, I think... one of the cars even came from Jay Leno's garage!). Anyways, so we headed over to Grandpa's secret warehouse to check out his cars. He has 6 classic cars, and then two everyday cars... enough that there's one for each child.

Haley with Grandma's hat on.


Grandma, getting a "tan"!Our Chad in the back, little Chad and Justin in the front.

After the car show, it was on to Hurricane Harbor for a day of water slides, craziness and water fun. All had a good time, as we tried not to get too sunburned - considering we already were pretty burned from the beach.


And then, of course, being the 4th of July, fireworks with a bbq that night.

Olympics!

Nancy and Kayla in a heated Ping Pong game!
Macy, (little) Chad, Justin and Haley. Macy and Haley playing air hockey.
Nicole and Kayla making ribbon flip flops.

Kayla modeling her finished ribbon flip flops.

Thursday we stayed home! Yippee! Although we were crazy, busy with family Olympics! We had all sorts of competitions, run by Uncle Rick and Aunt Shannon, with all the rest of us being the judges and players. Aunt Shannon signed me up for shuffleboard, which I've never played before, and truly am not very good at (I'm not very good at cannon balls either, although I did beat out Heidi, so it counts for something!), and I was the judge for the Ping Pong tournament. Luke walked away with medals in under 12 Kids' air hockey, putt putt golf and something else and D won the medal for adult shuffleboard - such a varied group we have.

We also did some cute arts -n- crafts with the kids. A busy day for everyone.

That night at our "drive-in" theater we watched "Spiderwick Chronicles". Grandma ordered this HUGE Mickey Mouse inflatable screen that they put up on the sport court and each night we pull our air mattresses up there, make some popcorn, and watch movies. Lots of fun! Last night we watched "Watcher in the Woods" - an old Disney movie.

See the big Mickey screen? Isn't it cool????

Family sand day.

Reed just chillin'.
Chad, Luke and Hunter building sand tunnels.
Some of the girl cousins (and others!)- me (with Reed), Leslie, Lisa, Brandon, Sherri, Bob (I think), Heidi, Katie and Stacey
The whole gang - what a group!
D and all of his first cousins

Wednesday was beach day. We started out the day wearing our red "Huck Camp" t-shirts that grandma made for us, having our picture taken by a photographer in the backyard. Then we all headed to the beach where we met up with some of grandma's siblings and their families. I think that we figured there were now about 90 of us! They also got the white Disney shirts, so we took some more family pictures. What an amazing group!

Tuesday.

Tuesday was our Temple/Service day. All the youth eligible to go to the Temple, did, and we did Temple Baptisms. It was especially neat for us because now that Chad is 12, he was interviewed by our Bishop before we left, so he was able to go and do baptisms. And what was even better... he was able to perform the baptism for my dad, who died when I was 2. It was really neat and very special for me and very emotional for a lot of us. When Derrick was baptizing Chad, he was crying, and I was crying, and some of the rest of our family was crying. It was the first baptism that Chad did, and it will always be remembered!

Then, we stayed at the Temple for a while longer and were able to perform some other ordinances, including going thru the Temple with Kendra, who took out her endowments for the first time. Many firsts today!

The ones that stayed home did some service projects with grandma, and just played and swam and had a good day.

Then that night we all met up at a fundraiser for Buck McKeon (he's something for the state of California - and grandpa is a HUGE supporter of his... as well as a good friend)... but the reason we were all there is that Mitt Romney was the guest speaker. Oh, our nephew David was beside himself! He loves Mitt. I'm not political at all... but I must say that Mitt Romney is a very good speaker and I think that we all really enjoyed ourselves. It was nice because it was in someone's (giant) backyard, but there weren't that many people there (probably a few hundred), and David got to meet Mitt and have his picture taken with him and everything. This could be our future president, and we got to meet him and see him wearing jeans and a cowboy shirt. How strange is that?

Disney Days!

Us in front of the Haunted Mansion.
Uncle Rick, cousins Krista, Tara and Amy, and Aunt Terri
Reed, Haley and I with Pooh Bear
Haley and Reed enjoying some Mickey lollipops
Justin, Uncle Jeff, Kayla, Aunt Shannon, Aunt Christine, Austin, Uncle Donny, Cody, Tyler, Corey, Dakota and (Little) Chad

Monday we all headed to Disneyland. There are now 54 of us in total! Pretty awesome. Grandma got all of us Disney shirts to wear, and although they are white, it made it pretty easy to locate our groups. Just look for a group of people all wearing white shirts!

It was fairly warm, but not too busy, and we got to do everything we wanted. We even headed over to California Adventure and went on a bunch of rides over there. We took Haley on Soarin' Over California for the first time... and she didn't care for it too much! It made her really nervous. She really thought that we were going to fall in to the water.

Stinky part was my camera battery died half-way thru the day... so not too many Disney pics.

Sunday.

The circle surrounding Chad after they gave him his Priesthood.

He's hugging Grandpa in the back.

What a good looking bunch of men!

L-R: Ian (Kendra's husband), Uncle Rick, cousin Jon, Uncle Jeff (in the back), Uncle Donny, D, Chad, Grandpa, cousin Rob, cousin Tyler, Uncle Bob, cousin Cody and Uncle Duane. (Uncle Curtis missing - miss you Curtis! He's the Bishop in his ward, so they weren't able to come out until the next day.)

Grandpa giving Austin his "Eagle" award.

Last Sunday found us at Grandma and Grandpa's church for their services. They somehow seemed to think that we could sing, so they put us on the program as The Huckvale Family Singers (there were 41 of us there - we filled up their WHOLE choir section!), and we sang the "Sisters of Zion/Armies of Helaman" medley that is done at many EFY's (Especially for Youth). Oh, and did you know that one of Derrick's cousins' husbands put together that special arrangement? Very cool! We sang... and mind you, we are NOT the Osmonds... no where near... but we did a pretty good job... and Grandma was crying, so all is good!

That night we had our first family council. We all met on the sport court, and discussed the rules and regulations for Huck Camp. We then ordained Chad a Deacon, which was really cool. All the men that were able to were up there in his circle and D gave him a special blessing. It was really neat to see the Power of the Priesthood that we hold in our family. What an awesome experience to have so many of our men up there!


We were also able to present Austin with a special carved Eagle that grandma and grandpa had made for him because he earned his Eagle Scout award.

California or bust.

After driving about 17 1/2 hours on Saturday (two Targets, two Walmarts, 3 gas stops, 2 food - for those of you keeping track) - what seemed like FOREVER! - we arrived safely and soundly in Los Angeles for our week of "Huck Camp" - our family reunion. 53 of us all under one roof - Grandma and Grandpa's - for a week of fun, excitement and lots of family time... if we don't kill each other! :O) Just kidding! We love to see our cousins and are very excited to see how this week will play out. Will let you know.