Family Reunion Activity Ideas

Here are some other activities {besides skiing} we did during our family ski trip/family reunion:

The package of mustaches came with 6 different ones to choose from.  It cost me $1 and they were self adhesive.  We used the iPhone app Pop Booth to let the kids take a photo booth strip of themselves.  This brought a lot of laughs and fun!

I asked the kids to find some sticks to use for roasting our S mores.  This was sneaky on my part because it was an effort to get the kids out of the house and outdoors! 😉  It worked though!  One of the older boys (15) was nice enough to whittle the sticks for us.  I am grateful our rental house had an outdoor fireplace for us to be able to roast S mores.  Yummy and fun!

We brought the Wii for the kids to play on, but when they weren’t on it they were playing card games like Go Fish & Uno.  They would also play electronic games on the iPad & iPod touch like Air Hockey, Draw Something, Temple Run and many others.  Since we did so much skiing during the day, it didn’t bother me for them to have some down time playing on their devices.  It’s nice for the grown ups to have the kids quiet for some time. {If you know what I mean ;)}  My favorite out of the above was our game of freeze dance.  The kids would pick out a song on their iPod.  We would all dance until I paused the song.  At that time everyone was to FREEZE from dancing.  If anyone moved they were out of the game.  This gave me a chance to dance too! {Even though my kids hated me dancing…HA!}

We don’t see a lot of snow where we live.  This was a perfect opportunity for the kids to have some snow fun.  The snow was melting and difficult to make a snow man, but perfect for a snowball ‘fight.’  We gave them a few rules: don’t hit in the face & stay about 10 feet away before throwing the snowball.  Fun times!

Check with the chamber of commerce about local parades or events going on.  Kids always enjoy parades.  We liked attending this St. Patrick’s Day Parade the last full day we were in Pagosa Springs.

Other activities we enjoyed:

• Movie nights – The adults watched the movie Grown Ups one night after the kids went to bed…the movie is pretty hysterical!  We all laughed until our bellies ached.  On another evening we watched Disney’s Tangled and served popcorn.
• Hot Tub – We were blessed to have rented a house with an indoor hot tub.  It was perfect for soothing aching muscles from skiing.  We had a 10pm curfew for the kids to use the hot tub.  Our other rule was to have an adult in the hot tub with the kids.
• Star Gazing – We saw Venus, Mars & Jupiter among many constellations.  The night sky was very dark so we were able to see lots of stars.  My Dad used a special star gazing app to identify the planets and constellations.  {Sorry, I don’t know what the name of it is, but I can find out if you want to know.}  It was gorgeous and educational!
• Birthday Party –  My Brother-in-Law had a Birthday while we were there.  We held a party in his honor.  I am writing a post more about this later.

Posts coming up will be about:

1. How we rented the awesome home we stayed in
2. Our menu, we ate the majority of our meals at the house
3. Memory book idea
4. Family song of the week
5. Excellent app every family needs to help with communication during the trip/reunion

Family activities bring unity,