Stone Mountain Family Reunion

Last weekend we headed down to Stone Mountain, Georgia for the Beckett Family Reunion. My family gets together every other summer to visit and catch up. The Becketts are spread out all over the USA, so it is difficult to get everyone together, but a fairly centralized location is chosen, and we always hope that many "Becketts" can come. This year, my cousin Jill coordinated the reunion and chose Stone Mountain Park for the location. It was beautiful and I'm so glad that we got to visit this state park in Georgia! On Saturday morning, Beckett and Sean climbed up Stone Mountain while Will, Helen and I took the Skyride Cable Car to the top! We met them up there and enjoyed the view for a bit and then took the Skyride back down to the park. Here is a family picture on top of the mountain.

This is the carving in the side of Stone Mountain.The Memorial Carving depicts three Confederate heroes of the Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and Lt. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.The mountain is 825 feet tall and covers 583 acres. The top of the mountain is 1,683 feet above sea level. The entire carved surface of the Memorial Carving measures three acres, larger than a football field.

We also took a train ride around the base of the mountain. This was a little later in the afternoon and Will stayed awake for about 3 or 4 min. before he crashed. The train pretty much rocked him to sleep!

Next, we went to Camp Highland Outpost in the park where Beckett and Helen participated in a low ropes course and had fun on the zip line. Here is Beckett looking super cool as he flew through the ropes course.

 It was a bit more challenging for Helen, but she loved it!

 Loved this action shot as Helen used the ropes to help her balance on the line bridge!

That afternoon before our family dinner, we gathered at the hotel and took some pictures. This is a picture of the whole group of Becketts with their families!

Granbob and Grankaki Beckett with Will, Helen and BECKETT! And, true to form, my Beckett is giving Grankaki bunny ears! Aren't nine year old boys fun? :)

My family with my mom, dad and sister Susi!

After dinner on Saturday night, we all returned to the park and watched the laser light show on the side of Stone Mountain. It was very good! We all then returned to our hospitality suite at the hotel and surprised my dad with a birthday celebration to honor his upcoming 70th birthday! Beckett and Helen helped him blow out his candles!

The Harper family is about as "low tech" as you can get in today's society. Sean likes to quote a Jimmy Buffett lyric in reference to our lack of specialized phones and gadgets; "I don't NEED that much organization in my life!" We own one very old cell phone (a "flip" phone....which I understand is pretty lame) and we just added limited texting to our plan last week. Anyway, my kiddos got to enjoy all of my family's high tech gadgets this weekend and I was amazed at how quickly they catch on to how to use these things! Here, Beckett and Will were playing with my cousin's I-Pad and loving every minute of it!

 At dinner on Saturday night, my cousin Ric was Will's best bud as he let him play with his phone. I was amazed at how quickly Will figured out how to operate this thing. He was using his thumbs to drag screens around and had so much fun with it. 

This last picture was just too cute not to share. I loved that this picture caught both Will and Helen playing with people's phones and you get Helen's dimple and Will's concentrating pose with his tongue sticking out! How fun! I think at this point in the night, all three of our kids were playing games on phones! Oh my!

They are having high-tech gadget withdrawls this week.....but that is fine with us!

We had a great time in GA with the Becketts and hope to see many of our family members again soon!