Mike and I spent the weekend of June 5-8 at my cousin's lake house in Wisconsin. He graciously planned and organized a gathering of the 5 surviving
Sonnemaker 1st cousins, children of
Honora Sonnemaker Decker, Emma Jean
Sonnemaker Pruess, and Bonnie
Sonnemaker Johnson. We were missing my brothers -- Bill, who passed away in 2005; and Thomas, who passed away in 1960. Here is a picture of the cousins, standing in birth order (from left to right) from youngest (ME!!!) to the oldest:
Janice, Rex and Patty (siblings), Paula and Bill (siblings)
Bill's lake house was gorgeous...as was the surrounding area. It sits on the Chippewa
Flowage -- I don't quite understand what a "
flowage" is, but it looks like a lake, to me! Here is a pic of the front of his house:
...and the back of his house:
Mike and I were the first to arrive, and Bill and Kathie taught us how to play "
Bolo Wrap", which is a really fun yard game. You kind of fling
two golf balls tied together on a string across the yard, and they (hopefully) wrap themselves around one of the PVC pipes on the stand you see below. The higher the pipe, the more points you get. Mike needs to make one for us!
Pat, Patty, Rex and Chris were the next to arrive, and we spent the afternoon out on Bill's deck waiting for Paula and Ron to arrive.
It was quite windy, and while we were out, at least 3
trees fell just around us. This one landed just a few yards from Bill's hot tub, and Rex's Lexus!
The first night Bill treated all of us to a wonderful dinner at the original "Famous Dave's BBQ". Some had fish, or ribs, and I enjoyed a pulled pork sandwich. I think Patty and Kathie were admiring the coffee/tea pots that were hanging on a beam above them.
Afterwards, the silly girl cousins decided we weren't too old to ride on a carousel, so we all climbed on and went round and round -- much to the disbelief of our husbands. I was surprised that it actually moved once we all got on it!
Contrary to popular belief, we had NOT had too much to drink!
Bill took some of us on a boat tour of the
flowage (here are Patty and I), and Mike and Pat went on a long canoe ride.
We spent a lot of time just visiting and reminiscing -- here is a snapshot of some of the time we spent. Notice all the computer geeks with their computers (no offense intended), the apple martinis, and the happy faces.
Pat wisely brought along mosquito nets. I am a mosquito magnet -- I wish I would have had one for my entire body. I got eaten alive and itched for DAYS after coming home. I think I keep
Benadryl cream in business all on my own. Mike and I are going to Alaska on June 19, and have heard the
mosquitoes are horrible in the interior. Pat (who went to Alaska on a rafting trip) said the mosquitoes are so thick there that if you open your mouth, you could eat them for lunch. Great. I better stock up on OFF before I go. Here we are with Pat's mosquito nets on our heads. Think I will buy one of those, too!
Each cousin was asked to create a "reminiscing tool". Most of us chose to do a slide show of family pictures, but our creative art teacher cousin Paula assigned an evening of Christmas ornament creating. We drew names from a bag, and had to create an ornament for that cousin. Bill's wife Kathie had us create bookmarks from natural birch bark. Here we are creating --it was a lot of fun!
All in all, it was a very nice weekend. Bill, Paula, Patty and I got some family history questions answered, and we all enjoyed getting reconnected. The spouses (shown below) were all very good sports, and put up with our
Sonnemaker chant with patience and understanding.
Mike (Janice), Chris (Rex), Pat (Patty), Ron (Paula), Kathie (Bill)
THANKS, BILL AND KATHIE, FOR THE GREAT WEEKEND!
For more pictures (and a video of the infamous carousel ride), check out Bill's blog: here
Then we did this...three times! Ontario to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage, and Anchorage to Fairbanks. 
Our sense of time got thrown off by how light it was...we ended up having dinner at 11:00 p.m. ! It looked like maybe 5 or 6 p.m. At 12:45 A.M., this is what the sky looked like: 
Official sunset was 12:48, sunrise was 2:39, It never got comletely dark, just lilke twilight. Tomorrow when we go to Barrow, it will be light all 24 hours of the day since it is the summer solstice. This morning we got up and had an expensive breakfast at Denny's -- food is not cheap in Alaska! Then we went to Wal-Mart and picked up a couple things we forgot. After that, we coated ourselves with mosquito repellant and drove to the Large Animal Research Center. 
There we saw musk oxen 
and some caribou...
We learned that caribou and reindeer are pretty much the same animal -- reindeer is a domesticated caribou. So, what separates the two is just a fence. Caribou in the wild, reindeer in captivity. In the photo below, Mike is holding one caribou antler -- it was HEAVY! 
From there we went to Creamer's Field, which is a refuge for migratory waterfowl. We saw lots of crane, and other birds. We took a hike through the boreal (0r northern) forest, in hopes of seeing a moose. The forest was beautiful, we saw lots of fern and wildflowers -- but no moose. Darn. Here is a picture of Mike and I in the forest: 
From there we drove to see part of the TransAlaska Pipeline -- which carries millions of gallons of crude oil from Prudhoe Bay in north Alaska to the port city of Valdez. It takes the oil 9 days to get from one end of the state to the other. It is elevated along part of the route (like it is here) so it doesn't melt the permafrost which lies under the soil. 
Tomorrow we are off to the Arctic! Barrow is the northernmost town on the North American continent . Hope we have better luck spotting some polar bears than we did with the moose! Oh, GREAT weather today. Scattered clouds, and 80 degrees! It's 10:20 P.M. and looks like 4:00 in the afternoon. So strange! We're going out to the patio to enjoy the midnight sun. Goodnight!
