For the first time in years I was home during my brother-in-law’s family reunion, held at Porcupine Springs, ID. What a grand time we had, beautiful camping weather, delicious food, live music, ghost stories, and enough little munchkins calling “Uncle Ryan!” to fill your heart with joy! Oh, and did I mention pyrotechnics?

The Ivies and an imposter - Uncle Ryan

My sis Taryn the card shark.

My niece Crystal, nephew Eric, and Sidney who's either spying on Eric's cards or taking a nap.

My grand nephew Tayt, all smiles and joy, and stronger every day after a lifelong battle with heart troubles.

My grand nephew Jayce strutting his stuff after inflicting some serious damage on the piñata.

Tayt and I monitoring the card table for any misconduct.

A mid-day jam session.

The Land Admiral (my brother-in-law Mike) weaving tales by the campfire.

You can take the geek out of NASA, but it’s hard to take the NASA out of the geek. I brought along a little “surprise” for my grand nephew Gage – a couple model rockets to build and launch. Between two rockets we had four successful launches to around 1,000′, but by the end of the day had lost the larger rocket despite a massive search party. Turns out the tree with an X through it on the box means don’t launch in a forest. Looking back I suppose that’s not exactly rocket science, oh well. Good times!

Payload Engineer Gage inspects the rocket after its maiden launch.

What goes up must come down, somewhere!

By the last launch we had drawn quite a crowd.