Fuller Fest 2012 (Part 1)

Every other year we get together with my family and rent a big place for a few days and have a big celebration of being together, and call it Fuller Fest.  When you live so far away from everyone, it's really hard not being able to see them very often.  When we do come home to Idaho, we usually get to see a few siblings, but its basically never that we get to see everyone.  Last Fuller Fest, we were not able to go, and it was so sad and hard to know that my whole family was all together having fun, making memories, and me and my little family was missing it all. 

Well this year, because my husband is so nice, and his family is so sweet, they flew me and my kids to Idaho so that we could go.  (His family was planning on coming out to see us, but learned of our Fuller Fest, and flew us home, instead of them coming out here to Texas to see us.  Hadley was on call so he wasn't able to come to Idaho with us.  So Had didn't get to see his family, so I could see mine.  I love him, and his fam!)

So first things first....we needed to take care of some business.

Family Pictures!

They were long overdue.  And even though Hadley and Josh (Lindsey's husband) were not there for pics, we decided we had to have them anyway, and hopefully we can crop them in somehow.

I snapped some pics throughout the long process with my own camera. 

Family pictures....always a good time!  ha 

After that was all said and done and it was time for us to check in, we drove up to this montrosity of a house (9,000 sq ft), perched on the top of a hillside, overlooking the beautiful valley of Herriman, UT.

We also have a theme for our Fuller Fest every year.  This year it was a cruise ship, and our ship was called the Fuller Legacy.  When we got there, Bud, Zach, and my mom were our bellhops and took all of our luggage and brought it to our rooms.  They stood under this sign as we drove up.  HAHA

We climbed aboard the ship, met the ship captain, and had our pictures taken as our individual families.

Each day we got an itinerary on our beds, complete with mints and animal oragami. Everything was so detailed and set up for a cruise.   Angie spent a lot of time on this and everything turned out so awesome!

We lounged and talked.

Our first port: Pirate Island

We were divided up into teams and had to create a flag for our team.  Our team was No Mercy!
  We also had a pirate birthday party for everyone where we all got a gift.  The kids went on a treasure hunt for their birthday treasure, and the adults played a game to get theirs.

Our next port, was the Aquarium. 

On our way home from the aquarium, we could see smoke coming up from the mountains where the house was.  Some peeps that went back to the house said this was the view they could see.  The fire was just on the other side of that mountain.

Well, some of us didn't want to go back to the house, we wanted to go check it out!

As we drove closer, the smoke got so thick.  We got there before the firetrucks and police did.

It was crazy!!!  I've never been this close to a wildfire before.  It was so hot, and smokey, and close!  When we got out of the car to see it, I was trying to send Hadley a pic on my phone of it, and I couldn't even see what I was texting because the smoke was so thick.  There were so many people that were still just hangin out in their yards, calling peeps, or taking pictures.  We couldn't figure out why they weren't gathering up their stuff and leaving.  Don't get me wrong, we did see a few do that, but for the most part, not too many of them were leaving.  These were all new, big, beautiful homes.  So scary!  We were all talking about what we would grab, or when we would leave if those were our homes.

When we thought our tires might melt to the road, we decided it was time to get out of there.  And by that time, there were firetrucks and police everywhere, running to homes and telling them to get out, and closing roads.  So we all went back to the house we were staying in, and packed up our bags just in case we got evacuated too.  We all kept going outside and checking to see how much closer it was and if we should go, or wait until we get told we need to evacuate. 

Then came the phonecall from the owner of the house:

"We are being evacuated!"
All the sudden it turned a little chaotic at the house.  Everyone started loading crap into any car that they could see a little space.  Kids were thinking the fire was coming to burn us up, and some peeps just laughed at it all go down.  Anyway, we loaded up everything, including our food we had in the crockpots for that night's dinner, and decided to go to my brother's house, which was about 30 minutes away.   

We filled their street, their yard, and their house.  It was a little crazy with all of us (I think there was 36 of us) in a regular sized house for a regular sized family.  Fun times!!!

Later that night, we got another phonecall from the owner of the house and he told us the fire was contained and we could go back.  Whew!