Carling Family Fun!

What would cause a 7 year old to slide down a slippery slide in the pouring rain to land in the mud puddle below and fully saturate his clothes…the only ones that he has within 45 miles? Which in turn causes him to be miserable for the rest of the day? Probably just about anything could convince him to do something that silly…but in this case it was a cousin that was “daring him hard” to do something that foolish! Of course, that cousin wouldn’t do it himself, but he found a lot of pleasure in getting Connor to do it!

Each year my extended Carling family gets together in Logan to celebrate/remember the lives of our grandparents, George Isaac and Clara Pearl Astle Carling. This year the weather wasn’t too cooperative and it rained all morning before we headed for Logan.

Blaine, Ray, Grant (Dad), Lola - 4 of the 9 original Carling brothers and sisters

The Brothers and Sisters w/ their spouses - David (Linda), Faye and Blaine, Beverly and Ray, Lola and Dee, Nola and Grant (mom and dad)

After Lola left, Lee (another brother showed up), so we took another picture

Normally Rod has no desire to go with us to the party because he knows that I’ll stay forever if I can and he doesn’t like to stay anywhere that long...except home! This year I had actually been able to convince him to go with us and then less than 2 hours before we were supposed to leave, we realized that we had water in our basement…and not just a little bit! We had at least an inch of standing water in the freezer/storage room and several spots where it had completely saturated the carpet! I almost ended up having to stay home and help clean it up, but after we moved everything that was wet or in danger of getting wet, Rod told us to go ahead and go...without him! He would “take one for the team” and stay behind to do damage control and monitor the water situation! I’m sure he was heartbroken that he had to stay home…but I’m sure he would have preferred to stay home for a much better reason than having a mess like that in our basement! So it was just the boys and I that ended up going to Logan and we ended up going an hour or two later than we had originally planned!

Our party is held at my parent’s church, which is directly behind my childhood home and is the church that I attended before I moved away from home. Usually we like to sit outside and barbecue hamburgers, but that wasn’t going to work today. It was so wet that my dad had decided that he wasn’t going to barbecue at all, we were having hoagies instead!

There weren’t too many people that actually showed up to the party. In fact, out of 50+ cousins, there were only about 9 of us…and 5 of those were my brothers and sisters and I! That doesn’t stop us from having fun though , and especially not the little kids! In fact, my boys went out to play on the playground with their cousins and that’s when Connor got a “little” wet! It may have been fun (and funny) while he was doing it, but once he was that wet, it was more miserable than fun! Fortunately, Connor’s cousin Tyler had a pair of sweatpants that he’d worn the day before that Connor was able to borrow, so he didn’t’ have to be quite as miserable. It seemed kind of fitting that he borrow Tyler’s clothes, since Tyler had been the one to convince him that it would be fun to go down the slide in the first place! What we won’t do for a few laughs!

Front Row - Julie (Ray's), Kathy (Ray's), Vicki (Grant's)

Back Row - Sheri (Grant's), Jan (Grant's), Melanie (Linda's), Diane (Grant's), Cindy (Lola's)

All of the cousins that came, including Doug this time- Doug, Melanie, Diane, Cindy, Sheri, Vicki, Jan, Kathy, Julie