Let the Games Begin

We have a couple of cousins whose families live fairly close to my brother, so I thought it might be a good idea to get together for a game night. I learned a lot from that night. I invited my cousin Clayton and his family, my cousin Elizabeth and her family, and my cousin Loren and his family. I invited them via Facebook, and they all responded that they would meet us at Kyle's house for game night. This happened to be planned for the same day that we took Loren out fishing with us.

The time came for when people were supposed to start showing up and the doorbell rang. It was Elizabeth and her family. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally we called Clayton to see if they were almost there. He was surprised by the call. In fact, for some reason he thought that I was just kidding about game night. Somebody eventually convinced him that we were serious about game night and he and his family made the trip to Kyle's house. We were still missing Loren's family, which was strange because the last thing he said to us earlier in the day was that he would see us later. So, I made the call to Loren. He did not answer, but I left him a very long, informative message about how we were waiting for him. He called back and informed us that he had just woken up from his nap and was going to head our way. I guess working on the rice paddy wore him out.

Eventually Loren showed up, wearing the same clothes that we remembered from fishing earlier in the day. He did leave his hat at home. Everyone was finally there, games were being played, and ice cream was being eaten. It seemed like everyone was enjoying themselves. We started off with some Uno, and moved on to Buzzword, and then began playing a game called Things.
Things involves somebody reading a question or phrase and everyone writing down their answers. Then the answers are collected and you try and guess who wrote what. We were into our third round when things went wrong. I somehow ended up sitting next to Loren, who smelled of day-old rice paddy, blood, sweat, tears, and fish. However, just like living on a cattle farm eventually you get used to the smell. Loren's son wasn't so lucky.

The next series of events seemed to happen in slow motion:

Somebody whose name rhymes with Badam was in charge of the round of Things.

Loren's son could no longer take the stench and began to run from the room.

Just as he started to run, Badam grew frustrated with the game and exclaimed, "Put some stank on that b^*#&%@h!"

The vulgarity was too much for Loren's son to take and he immediately began to projectile vomit.

Loren's wife was in the line of fire, but only was grazed by the puke shrapnel. She grabbed him and ran to the bathroom.

It was too late. The wall and floor were soaked in vomit. Loren and Kyle went through a cupboard of towels to clean up the mess.

Game night was abruptly ended. We said our goodbye's and sanitized the house. It was the most memorable game night of my life.

A Day With Sister Marshall

One of our mornings involved taking my cousin Loren fishing with us. He was a novice fisherman, and we weren't sure if he had ever caught anything before. The attire he showed up in didn't help clarify our suspicions. Apparently, he had just finished up at the rice paddy and didn't have time to change. His "fishing hat" caused Kyle to go off on some racial tirades throughout our trip. Teaching Loren how to catch fish was not going to be easy. This looked like a job for Mr. Mustachio!
Loren: "Oh. Look like roundeye get fish lucky catch."

Loren's first real fish.

Loren was actually doing quite well. Kyle and I think that he probably caught the most fish of anyone going out with us for the first time. I don't recall the exact number, but I'm sure Loren could tell you (just subtract a few from that number). Here are a few more pictures.

As the minutes of the morning passed, I began to notice something different about the fish that Loren was catching. They seemed to swim with a little more flair than the one's that Kyle and I were catching. As I started to focus a little more on our surroundings I noticed something following Loren around in the atmosphere. I didn't quite believe what I was seeing until we got home and I saw this picture:

There was, in fact, a rainbow following Loren around all day. When I saw this, I realized that he was the gayest fisherman that I have ever fished with. I then started to remember something he pointed out when we were just leaving Kyle's house. He pointed at this house and said, "I really enjoy your neighbor's landscaping". Of course, I caught plenty of fish. It was probably my best day catching.
I was on fire to start off with.

Loren was trying to keep up with me, but realized that Kyle might be a more reasonable target.

There were even times when Loren and I both caught fish at the same time.

What would happen was that I would hook a fish and then one of Loren's fish would then start following my fish in and eventually get hooked by Loren. It all makes so much more sense now that I have seen the pictures.

Kyle was falling behind me by quite a lot of fish. I felt a little sorry for him, so I decided I would let him reel in my next fish. I cast my lure, started to reel in and snagged one for him. You could see the excitement in his eyes as I offered him my rod. Here is the result:

This was the catch of the day, and possibly of the stream fishing portion of our vacation.
Kyle was very pleased with the catch.

We all hooked fish at the same time at one point, but you wouldn't be able to tell by these attempts at proving it.

This is what a picture of Loren catching a fish would look like if it took place in the 1970's. I guess Kyle's camera has a Polaroid mode?

A couple more fish pictures of Loren.

Almost the catch of the day.

I would deem the trip a success overall. We probably could have done without all of Kyle's racial slurs towards Loren, and the rainbow that followed Loren all around. I also just remembered that Loren seemed to have packed a whole fruit basket in his backpack for the trip. Coincidence? Probably not. You would think that would be the end of our day with Loren, but you would be wrong. We met up with him later on that night for game night. Game night will be featured in the next post, so stay tuned.

Streaming

The main reason for going on vacation to Utah is to go catching. Some people call it fishing. Some people aren't as good as I am. I call it catching, because that's what I do. Luckily for the fish, I catch and release. In fact, I am pretty good at not touching the fish at all during this process. Every morning consisted of us getting up by 5 and heading out to fish. We fished streams for the most part, because I get bored with the other methods of fishing.


Some of us were keeping track throughout the week, and Mike won the most days. It isn't surprising. I think the fish gave him some sort of senior citizen discount. Plus, as much swimming as he did while we were fishing, they probably just thought he was one of them. And, we didn't even count all of the tree fish he tried to catch. Here are some of the pictures from the streams we hit during the week. Among the places we went were Hobble Creek, Thistle Creek, and Nebo Creek.

Yes, that is water up pretty high. No, that is not as high as it got. Yes, Mike did get stuck in mud and need help getting out.

Some people try and fish from boats. Mike tries to fish from trucks.

And Jed did go with us one morning too.