The Goertzen family has always been idiosyncratic and aired on the side of crazy and dangerous. We are very funny, love a good story, play all the new games on the block obsessively while always coming back to the old ones, and never leave an idea, however insane, without discussing every aspect of it in detail and figuring out how to accomplish it. There has been a change in the past few years. A shift. A sort of a moving on and a coming of age. The cousins have taken the place of the Uncles and Aunties, at least when it comes to escapades and endless energy. Let me show you what I mean by these things.
We drove up Riding Mountain this week for a few days' Goertzen retreat. We spent our time playing Camel Up and Last One Standing, soaking in the outdoor hot tub, putting the waterslide to unprecedented use, playing shinny on the rink, and many intense rounds of Donkey (in our bathing suits). Mind you, it was the cousins who did all this, while the adults mostly looked on and fed the mob of us. And the ideas, they flew. For example, as we froze our hair in the hot tub it was proposed that we storm the white house with a tank and see how far we got. This was seriously and animatedly considered, with the conclusion being that we should build the tank inside the Lincoln Memorial out of 1-foot-thick steel; or perhaps, make the Washington Monument into a rocket. The most unsanctioned thing we did we probably shouldn't have - all of us cousins excepting Sonnet went down the waterslide in a big train. We got those trains of children down to a science. I think we may have emptied the thing when all of us hit the slow-down lane like some sort of human battering ram. Nobody got hurt. That's how it goes with the Goertzens.
Lots of selfies on the drive up
The whole thing was well documented - often from three angles
All the food was delish as usual
Camel Up
Last One Standing
Donkey
We went swimming four times in 48 hours
A very well-designed series of logs
The first important step in forming a waterslide train
We felt like monkeys
And acted like monkeys too
The glass was a perfect mirror at night
We sort of overwhelm any space we're in
Ice droplets after more than an hour chit-chatting in the freezing steam
Hockey time with the Goertzens!
Always time for a quick nap
It's called sport dysphoria. Also called being Manitoban. Go Bombers!
We are quite the pair, if I may say so myself.
"...love one another fervently with a pure heart..." 1 Peter 1:22b
The Goertzen family is going snowboarding tomorrow. Catch us if you can!