{nostalgia}: peaches

I blog today of home and peaches. 
Growing up we would come to St. George, UT every Labor Day for our Annual Gubler Reunion. This was a particularly exciting trip for my siblings and I because we were never allowed to have sleep-overs growing up, so the opportunity to stay up all night and party with our cousins was overwhelmingly exciting. We would load up in the van and take the SUPER long drive from IF to StG, gradually getting hotter and hotter as we went. We would often stop in Salt Lake and visit cousins who would then join us on the continuing drive down south. Usually on that stop we would also pick up a box of peaches.

Some years we picked up 2 boxes of peaches, but usually it was just the one.

The reunion was always so much fun. Friday night the adults would leave all of us and go out for a fancy adult dinner. I always looked forward to getting old enough to go to that. Unfortunately, I never got to that point (I'm on the younger end of the cousins). We would gorge ourselves on pizza and stay up all night playing video games and watching movies. Saturday morning was always the service project and adult meeting. We would clean up my Grandparents house, yard, garage, orchard and the like. I always found at least one lizard to chase after! After that we'd eat, play softball, kickball or get into a huge water fight. And that night we would do skits and eat fried chicken. This was also significant because this was the one time a year that I got to eat fried chicken!! SOOO good. We would try and play Saturday night too, but usually we ended up going to bed-knowing that there would be another long drive in the morning. Our favorite card game was Rook-something I remember my parents staying up all night playing with my grandparents...and playing blind Rook with my Great-Uncle Merl was the best! He would let us set the points up to infinity.

Sunday morning we would pack up the van, with our peaches and head home. I think the peaches hold a lot of significance in the story because they were our souvenir from StG. We would eat them one by one and then the box would be gone-and summer with it. We loved eating them cut up with a little sugar and nutmeg and milk poured over the top. It was sad to see them go-knowing that the empty box meant school and homework and fall.

This last week bountiful baskets had Utah peaches. I also had the opportunity to go out and photograph a reunion at my grandparents house. My Aunt's mother bought their house when they passed away and so it was a lot of my cousins (and their cousins) celebrating in the same house, around the same time of year and going there overwhelmed me with nostalgia.

I can't believe its the last month of summer! Let's go play and make it count!