Moon Rock Easter Eggs

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Aunt Mo

I have to admit, I am having a really hard time getting my creative wheels turning after this COVID thing we’ve been going through. In our area, we are slowly opening up and it looks like we’ll be able to have the family reunions we planned for 2020 in 2021.

Let me remind you that I was planning a “Our family is out of the World” reunion and I was taking you step by step through the process.

One of the activities I planned was a “Moon Rock” hunt for the little children in our family.

Moon rook treasure hunt

Kids love treasure hunts and it’s a pretty easy activity for a family reunion and the Easter seawson is the perfect time of year to gather supplies for your space rock treasure hunt.

Package of 12 Easter eggs basketball image 0

Purchase round plastic Easter eggs and fill with space themed candy such as Milky Way, Mars bars and Starbursts. I found a couple of resources for round eggs on Amazon. These are 2 inches and you get 50 for under $10.00.

If you like baseball or soccer, you can get 16 of these eggs for under $10.00. These eggs look like they’ll be a little bigger but I can’t find the exact dimensions.

(If you can’t find round eggs you can use egg shaped eggs but they look more like tin foil eggs then moon rocks.)

Wrap eggs with tin foil that you have scrunched up so that it looks like a “moon rock”. I like use the foil sheets that are already cut. Just pull them out and wrap. I actually found mine at Dollar Tree.

Then the fun begins- hide eggs around your reunion site. You can do this hunt inside or outside.

This is a great time to get the tweens in your family involved in the reunion fun. Put them in charge of filling eggs, wrapping them and hiding the rocks. They’ll love being in charge of something and it’s just one less thing you have to worry about. As “payment” for their help, give your helpers a full size version of your space themed candy bars.

Reunion in a Pandemic

Posted on August 31, 2020 by Aunt Mo

No space for our Space family reunion

Labor Day weekend is traditionally the holiday the Stewart family gathers for their annual family reunion. We’ve been gathering without interruption for 37 years but what do you do during a pandemic? Well, in our case, we cancelled our family reunion. I’m not even going to get into the whys and why nots we hashed over to make our decision, but one huge reason we cancelled is that the campground we usually hold our reunion at put a limit of 50 campers at the site. The Stewart family is over a 100 people strong now so instead of trying to find a new location and dealing with masks and social distancing… we cancelled.

But our Space Reunion was planned and ready to go. So hey, we’re ready for next year and who knows how many great ideas we may come up with and extra 12 months to plan.

So Now What? Corona Virus and Your Family Reunion

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Aunt Mo

germs | Fozia Saeed

First of all, let me say that this- I’m writing this blog in April 2020. The things I write in this blog today could possibly be a lot different than what I will write in July of this year.

At the very beginning, before we all began staying home so that we can stay safe, I believed that in a couple of weeks life would get back to normal and come Memorial Day family reunion season would be moving full steam ahead but now what….?

Family gatherings are difficult right now. For example, how was your Easter? All of our children and grandkids live within 20 minutes of us and we invited them out for a Easter visit with these rules:

Everyone scheduled a one hour block of time to visit and they had to leave before the next group arrived. We practiced social distancing with Grandpa and Gramie staying to the side. We had Easter cupcakes for all to enjoy. They jumped on our trampoline and played in our horse pasture and worked on a simple 100 piece puzzle… and we sanitized. It was good to see them all but they all left with no hugs or kisses from Gramie.

Our first family reunion is in July. At first I thought we would be safe to go ahead with those plans but I received an email from the reunion planner asking for ideas on how to do an online family reunion. Since that email I’ve learned that the big air show in our area, scheduled for the end of June, has been canceled and then, two of the huge “Pioneer” day celebrations in our state canceled. The possibility of a family reunion in July “is getting more and more remote.

Our last family reunion is scheduled for Labor Day weekend. That’s the one I’m in charge of. It’s a space reunion and I’ve got tons of fun ideas that I can’t wait to do with my family. Will it be safe to bring 100 plus people together for a reunion the end of August?

I don’t know, you don’t know and nobody can say for sure and that’s the problem. How can you hold a family reunion that excludes family members because they don’t feel safe? How do you plan a family reunion that puts so many people that you love at risk- AND- will they be at risk in August? It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

So now what? The “what” in “now what” is that I’m moving forward with my space reunion planning. I have my doubts about a reunion during the three day Labor Day weekend but if we do, I’ll be prepared. If we don’t then just think how prepared I’ll be for our 2021 reunion- it will be the greatest family reunion ever!

Bottle Rockets- an “Out of This World” Reunion Activity

Posted on March 9, 2020 by Aunt Mo

When I decided on a space theme for our 2020 family reunion, there were two activities I was sure I wanted to do. The first was moon stilts (I’ll write that bog when I get some good photos) and the second, was water bottle rockets.

Our family has a big party every Independence Day and one our traditions is making and launching water bottle rockets. We invite all of our guests to make a water bottle rocket and bring it to the party but, for our reunion, I’ll bring the supplies, poster board, duct tape, markers and bottles and let reunion goers make their rockets on site.

Basically, to build a bottle rocket, you start by rolling a piece of paper into a cone shape and attach it to the bottom of an empty 1 or 2 liter plastic bottle. To help your rocket fly, you need to cut out 4 cardboard triangles to make your rocket fins. (There are lots of videos on YouTube to walk you through this process.)

At our Independence Day party, our seasoned rocket builders come up with some pretty creative designs for their rockets . Most add parachutes to soften the landing and some even include small, plastic toys that they send into space. No matter what the design, spectators love to watch the rockets blast off and their landings can be quite exciting.

For safety reasons, we only let adults operate the launcher. We have a homemade launcher and one we purchased from Amazon. Both work great but, keep in mind when planning your reunion, that you need to have a water source and hose available to fill the rockets with water.

AquaPod Bottle Launcher

At our reunion this year, we will give prizes for best design, most unusual design and most creative design. We will also give an award to the rocket that stays in the air the longest which we will determine by timing with a stopwatch on our phones. At our Independence Day parties, that award has been won by my son in law for the last 4 years. He’s a very talented engineer and his rocket designs are quite impressive and fun to watch.

Plastic Egg Moon Rock Hunt

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Aunt Mo

Moon rook treasure hunt

My husband and I do an Easter Egg hunt on horses every year for family and friends. As I was doing some online searches in preparation for the hunt I stumbled across this fun idea for my space reunion- a Moon Rocks Treasure Hunt!

Kids love treasure hunts and it’s a pretty easy activity for a family reunion. This is the perfect time of year to gather supplies for your space rock treasure hunt.

Package of 12 Easter eggs basketball image 0

Purchase round plastic Easter eggs and fill with space themed candy such as Milky Way, Mars bars and Starbursts. (If you can’t find round eggs you can use egg shaped eggs but they look more like tin foil eggs then moon rocks.)

Wrap eggs with tin foil that you have scrunched up so that it looks like a “moon rock”.

Then the fun begins- hide eggs around your reunion site. You can do this hunt inside or outside.

Space Camp Family Reunion

Posted on February 12, 2020 by Aunt Mo

Name Badge Designing

My favorite part of planning a family reunion is designing the name badges, invitations, water bottle labels and anything else that gives me a chance to be creative. I decided to create my name badge first and hopefully, in the process, come up with some sort of logo for the entire reunion theme.

The challenge with this name badge is that I can’t use copywrited images. At some point I’ll add a Space Camp reunion theme to my store and I can’t do that if I use copywrited materials. That means I can’t use anything NASA and that really makes this space camp theme difficult.

I’ve been playing around with some ideas but haven’t settled on a favorite. Take a look at my rough drafts.

I like the simplicity of this name badge but I’m not sure it would be that exciting for the kids in our family. I don’t know if I like the “Space Camp” logo on the top or the bottom of the badge.

Here’s an example of the logo at the top with “space camp” on the planet- I really like that.

This is my attempt at adding an astronaut to the badge- since we’ll be “astronauts in training”. Just not sure I have the “right” astronaut.

I don’t think I’ve nailed down the right name badge yet. If you have a comment or a suggestion, let me know.

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Category Archives: space camp

Moon Rock Easter Eggs

Moon rook treasure hunt

Reunion in a Pandemic

No space for our Space family reunion

So Now What? Corona Virus and Your Family Reunion

Bottle Rockets- an “Out of This World” Reunion Activity

Plastic Egg Moon Rock Hunt

Moon rook treasure hunt

Space Camp Family Reunion

Name Badge Designing

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