reunion

If there is anything cuter than matching mother/baby leopard print swimsuits, I don't know what it is...

This was taken at our family reunion in Lake Tahoe.

We had a great time seeing everyone. My mom is one of 14 kids, so we have a massive extended family. I would guess that I have close to 100 first cousins. It was so good to see everyone. Stella did great and just slept on the plane rides there and back.
For me, highlights of the trip were:
Trivial Pursuit Smackdown. My cousin Felicia is in law school and dating a classmate (Genaro) who recently qualified to be on Jeopardy. Trivial Pursuit in our family gets a little, well, intense, and the trash talking began early this year. I started hearing about it well before the reunion that there would be a challenge to my dominance of the game. ha. My favorite moment might have to be my gross overestimation of my sister-in-law Amanda's game face:

Q: What US city is across the border from Nuevo Laredo?
Me: "hmmm...."
Amanda: "I request the right to answer if she gets this wrong."
Me: "Jeez, I don't know, could it be Laredo..."
Amanda: "I withdraw my request!"
Me, thinking there's no way that is right, she is trying to psych me out: "Alamagordo?"

Yes, I lost, and lived to regret not letting Stephen (or anyone) be on my team. I admit that I wanted the chance to one day watch Jeopardy and say, "I beat that guy at Trivial Pursuit." Is that so terrible? Genaro and Felicia were a lot of fun and we really enjoyed spending time with them.

Also loved the scavenger hunt. I realized way too late that if you make up the list, you can't play, so I was on the judging end this year. I had a ball making up the list with things like:
-a cop, bonus points if he is three days from retirement
-get on tv
-a dharma initiative boat
-recreation of the tatoo scene from "dude where's my car"
-spirit fingers
-a moustache
-turn your team into a band, bonus points if you are on an actual stage with real audience
moustache
spirit fingers
I warned Genaro, who was a team captain, that the judging would be tougher than anything he's seen in law school. He came in to defend his team, and I explained that they had to be penalized because he did not appear in every picture, as per the rules. They had misunderstood and had one team member taking pictures, as opposed to the other teams that had to solicit help from strangers. I explained that this gave them a bit of a time advantage over the other teams. I waited for him to give a counter argument, but he folded quickly:

Genaro: "If you have to give us a zero, I understand. It's not that big a deal."
Me: "Maybe you'd better get someone else in here..."
My brother Paul, entering the room: "That's bogus! You can't expect him to hand his camera over to some stranger on the street! We should get full points!..."

Paul made a stirring defense, including the contention that this fulfills the requirement of both being a band and being on stage with an audience.
I gave him points for a band, but really I think you will agree that this is more "standing next to a band". Would have given it to them if we had seen some air guitar or Mick Jagger-style posturing.