Every year Eve's parents and family rent out a camp, called Camp Silver Creek, about 3 hours outside Mesa in a higher elevation mountainous area, for a week family reunion. The first half of the week, Monday thru Wednesday is for Eve's parents' children and their families, and then more extended family on the Schnebly side come for the second half from Thursday to Saturday. Since being in Anaheim we were already half way to Mesa, where Eve's parents and several siblings (Heber, Heather, Ruth, and Gloria) live, we decided to spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Mesa before heading to Camp Silver Creek on Monday. And it worked out well, too, since Peter's, Bonnie Jean's, and Beth Anne's families all arrived on Friday and early Saturday.
The usual scenario of recent years when we all congregate in Mesa is that Heber and Heather's house is our main home base, where both cousins and adults alike hang out and play games. The weather in the Phoenix/Mesa area is always scorching hot in the summer, and this summer has been especially hot in many places across the US, so it's difficult to encourage the kids to go outside and get some fresh air. A popular new game inside was trying out Heber's new Occulus Rift VR setup. Most of the family, both adults and kids alike, had never experienced VR and so were enchanted with trying out a few of the games. In Eve's case, unfortunately, experiencing VR is a lot like experiencing 3D movies when you only have one good eye… it mostly appears flat to her, although in VR with the environment being around her, it does at least give her a little more sense of immersion that just a flat TV screen.
The Rift in my case just fueled my interest in VR all the more after seeing so much of it over the last few days at Siggraph. I finally got out my Google Cardboard and was pleased to find my work laptop mac, which I had brought with me on the trip for my Siggraph presentation, was updated enough to use Unity3d to create a VR project for Cardboard. One I realized that was possible, I spent most of Friday working through a demo and successfully exported my first VR project onto my phone (the Cardboard is a viewer that allows a smart phone to be put in front of its lenses. The phone VR app displays its images in two offset cameras, like 3d, in order to create the VR experience). The demo was taking a simple Unity game demo where you move a ball around a board to collect boxes, applying the Cardboard coding libraries to it, and making the changes necessary to view the game in VR and control it with the Cardboard. On Saturday, I then spent a lot of the day creating my own VR game, which at the time was just a 1st person maze (a la the dungeons in the first Phantasy Star game for the Sega) you can move around in. I would love to further develop it into a full 1st person role playing game.
It was nice to have time to sit and have time to work on a personal project while the kids were playing with their cousins. They usually only see each other once every one or two years, so being mostly hands off as a parent and letting them have adventures with their cousins is really good for them. Then it also gives Eve and I a chance to mingle with the other parents and Eve's other siblings and parents and keep updated with what's new with life and each other's families. And board games, for both kids and adults alike, are popular in Eve's family, so soon games like CashFlow are brought out.
From Friday to Sunday Eve and I and our kids stayed at the house of Eve's Uncle Harold and Aunt Eddie. They have a sort of duplex there in Mesa with enough room for an extra family, and so we appreciated being able to stay there and some privacy to ourselves, even if it was only for the mornings an evenings we were there. Harold and Eddie have been called to serve a mission together in Germany, and Sunday happened to be when they were scheduled to speak one last time before leaving on their mission. So everyone in Eve's family attended their ward, which is the same as Eve's parents' ward, anyways. Not only did we take up an extra 3 pews easily with our families, but we also almost doubled their Primary attendance, too! After church Eve and I drove about 2 and a half hours to Thatcher to see a property there we recently just bought from Harold and Eddie. Like our 2nd Ave property in Mesa we're renting out, the Thatcher property has 3 units in 2 buildings. We met with Paul, who rents one of the units and also is a handyman and does maintenance on the units, in order to finally see the units in person, inspect them, and discuss repairs that need to be done. It was great to see them firsthand, and there is a lot Eve and I can plan and update to the property as there is much space in an attic, basement, workshop, and outside yards where we can clean up, update, and possibly build on in order to increase the value of the property.
Monday we packed from our stay in Mesa and left for the 3 hour drive to Camp Silver Creek. Used for girls camps in the area, Camp Silver Creek is about a mile or two outside Taylor and has a lot of open space campsites near a creek and a covered facility with a kitchen pavilion, flush bathrooms and showers. It even has areas for shooting and archery. And with the higher elevation, the kids are able to run around, swim, canoe, play games, and more outside without being in the burning heat of Mesa and Phoenix. We brought our lodge tent which fits our size family nicely, with the kids on one side, Eve and I on the other, and still some space in the middle for standing and storing stuff. We set it up in the afternoon soon after arriving to the camp and while it started to sprinkle, thankfully getting it before the rain came down harder. It rained quite a bit while we were camping there, usually more in the afternoons and evenings. Most of the rain was light and in short bursts, but Thursday night especially there was harder rain that challenged the dryness integrity of everyone's tents. Our tent faired really well over the week in terms of staying dry… it only dripped inside some on Thursday night with the heaviest rain, and most seem to be from condensation from the rain, rather than any specific leak spots.
We stayed there from Monday until Friday, and the days' activities were rather free-form and spontaneous depending what people felt like doing. Everyone came together to eat for 3 meals a day, with each couple or family in charge of 1 or 2 meals throughout the week. And there is always lots of food! Board were popular throughout the week, especially CashFlow, Rummikub, and Settlers of Catan. I enjoyed learning to play Rummikub, especially since we have the game at home but hadn't ever played it. I participated in an especially long Settlers game with Gordon, Peter, Beth Anne, Cameron, and Mathas (one of Joseph and Zoe's sons). Since we had six players, we played with the expanded board and rules, as well as with the knight and cities expansion pack, adding a pirate ship and commodities to the mix to give more fun options of how to play.
Tuesday morning Eve's father took the grandkids fishing at a nearby lake, and just about everyone went with him except for Grandma, Eve, Gloria, Anna, Rita, and me. With the rest gone, it was the perfect time for us to hide goodies on "treasure island". Every year at Camp Silver Creek it's a tradition for candy, coins, and/or other goodies to be placed on a small little island in the middle of the creek (about the size of a small bedroom). The grand kids just love swimming or canoeing over there, grabbing the treasure, and then dividing it amongst themselves. Even when more family arrived on Thursday, they came prepared as well with more coins and candy to hide for the kiddies to find.
While it was relaxing and vacation-like to me to have time to sit under the pavilion and work on my game on my laptop, I did take advantage of the camping and family environment to get "out" to do other things besides helping with the treasure hunt preparation and organization: I played some softball on Wednesday. No one was especially good at it, so it was fun to play casual game with adults and kids alike. I appreciated that Cameron and Landon got into it and had a lot of fun, as I never practice anything related to baseball with them. On Thursday some of us, along with two of Joseph and Zoe's kids, Landon and Sarah, played the Schnebly family favorite, Stink Base. That game involves a lot of running and gave me the most exercise I've gotten for awhile. Eventually we started the sudden death round where people had to stay out for good when they were tagged instead of going to jail. Landon was the last player left on our team after beating odds and getting a couple players out on his own before finally being tagged out. Wednesday night "karaoke night" turned out more fun than I expected. There was a decent selection of songs, and I decided to sing "Eye of the Tiger" and "Ghostbusters".
No comments:
Post a Comment