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As youth it was our tradition, every summer, to get together and caravan over to the Deschutes River for a day of white water rafting fun, but now that we have turned into old farts with children of our own we let that tradition slip away. It's been about 13 years since our last church, youth group, white water rafting trip. A friend of ours (Annette Rose) decided it had been way too long and planned a white water rafting trip for 25 friends. There were only about 5 original people from when we used to go as kids and the rest were 1st timers.

Our group of 25 was divided in 3 boats.

Our boat carried Dan and I, Annette & Jacob Rose, Cory & Sonja Hansen,

Brooke & Jared Rose, and Kaitlyn Dickey.

We spent most of the day drenching the other 2 boats.

It was one continuous water fight ALL DAY LONG!

The other boats finally got smart and swam over to steal our water guns and buckets.

The funnest part of that exchange was witnessing the ninja like skills of the men in our boat retrieving their lost weapons. It was an epic battle! To Mike Scott's credit it took 3 men from our boat, and a near drowning experience before the water gun was finally pryed from his death grip and returned to it's rightful owners. But, we eventually recovered the weapons and continued on as before.

When we weren't attacking the other boats, we were holding on for dear life.

Class 4 rapid Oak Springs was one of a few rapids we survived.

We had a BLAST!

Let's do it again next year!

Wednesday, July 16th

Dan and I took the kids to the Salt Lake Temple today. We love it there!!! The Salt Lake temple has such a special meaning to us because of its rich history and it also happens to be the temple where Dan and I were married 10 years ago.

We spent about 7 hours there with the kids touring the conference center, the visitor centers, and temple square. We also watched the Joseph Smith movie as a family.

It was fun to watch the kids enjoy it. They each were given a disposable camera before the trip began and each of them kept posing and snapping pictures of everything they thought was cool. Most of their pictures were of the temple grounds and the beautiful fountains and statues.

This experience with the kids was priceless!! Many times throughout the day the kids made beautiful comments and remarks about what they were seeing and how it touched their hearts. I can tell that the time we spent together today on temple square has helped strengthen each family members testimony of the Savior and his gospel. We loved the time spent there!

After Temple Square we took the kids to dinner at the Mayan.

This is a fun themed restaurant with a big waterfall and pool inside the restaurant. Every 20 minutes divers come out to perform a little show for all of us. They are diving from 2-3 stories high and it is quite fun to watch.

Thursday, July 17th

The next day we started out at Thanksgiving Point near Lehi. They have a farm there for kids and families to enjoy horses, cows, goats, chickens, rabbits, and more. They have pony rides and a wagon ride which the kids enjoyed.

From here we went back up to Salt Lake to the Gateway Mall where they have a huge children's museum. That was a ton of fun and took hours and hours before we finally called it a day.

Next it was off to a park for a family picnic and some games. And then we retired for the day.

Friday July, 18th

Friday was the official beginning of the Ostler Reunion. F.U.N. was the theme of the reunion standing for Families United in Numbers. The entire Ostler extended family met at 7 peaks water park for a day of fun in the sun. I thought it might be a chore to handle our 18 month old (Hudson), but to my surprise he was a happy and cooperative kid all day. He enjoyed the slides, the water, the tubes, and all the fun.

This was a really cool park. If I lived in that area I would totally get a membership to the park and take the family often.

After the water park, we all changed into white shirts and denim pants. We met up with all the family at a park for pictures. Here was the “family picture fest”. Nearly 70 of us posing for pics. It went pretty well, all things considered.

One of the funnier moments of all the evening was when Grandma and Grandpa were posing in a picture with their 6 living children behind them. After a few serious picture were taken, Scott pulls out some sunglasses and puts them on Grandma. As if that wasn’t funny enough, she started dancing around and hamming it up. She was spunky and spontaneous and thanks to that moment some of us had a side ache after laughing so hard.

Saturday, July 19th

The next morning we started out at Aunt Nadine's graveside for a Family Home Evening of sorts. All extended family met there and gathered around the grave as we had a memorial service for Nadine and a message about the plan of salvation along with songs and testimonies.

It was a beautiful gathering and the spirit was felt strongly.

We separated from the graveside to get lunch and meet at the park for an afternoon of fun.

Upon meeting at Rock Canyon Park in Provo the party began.

It was blazing HOT!!! But we were determined to have fun regardless. The family had previously arranged for each family to chose a family color and make a t-shirt in that color for each member of our family. We chose yellow. Each person had a number corresponding to when they came into the family. That number was printed on their t-shirt. Example, Lee as the oldest in the family was #1. Dan was number #8, I came into the family at #44, and our kids had numbers as well. It was a site to see. All the families in matching colored T-shirts with numbers 1-73 on the backs of them. Hence the reunion theme... Family United in Numbers (F.U.N.)

We played games, ice blocked down a hill, BBQ food for dinner, and all sorts of laid back interaction.

Tons of fun.

By the time we got home that night we were exausted.

Sunday, July 20th

We spent Sunday with the Justensen family. They served missions with Dan. We had a tour of their beautiful new home, had dinner and let our kids play. It was great catching up with our old friends. Monday morning we hit the road and headed back home. Everyone in the family loved our trip to Utah.