Sprimmer 2011, the Ultimate Season

I had my first roasted marshmallow of the season tonight (and, necessarily, the first Sandlot reference of the season), which means Summer has officially unofficially begun!
At least, the actual, real Summer planning has begun.

I have some heavy duty plans for this Spring/Summer - I'm going to go ahead and call it Sprimmer to save time - the opening night kickoff was just the right toasty softness to make for a very promising season.

Plus, the mallow was one of those GIGANTIC mallows, which I'm taking for a sign regarding how awesome this Sprimmer will be.

The season's first huge event is Memorial Day Weekend - I'll be kickin' it at Duck Beach, in North Carolina, at this GIGANTIC condo with 30 other peeps, and a million of other LDS playas (literally, one million - not an exaggeration...) ready to get this 3-day weekend on. Apparently this is the mother of all East Coast LDS singles events - I just googled duck beach to make sure it was in North Carolina, and Google's predictive search thing popped up with "duck beach," "duck beach nc," "duck beach rentals," "duck beach mormon," "duck beach lds." That's how popular it is. From what I hear, this year a documentary is scheduled to made about it - by a non-mormon, which means all the intrigue and scandal that comes with way too many single people shoved in one place will be found. Whether intrigue and scandal are actually even happening anywhere or not.

But disregarding this mythological quality Duck Beach's reputation seems to have, options I've come up with to make the weekend a success are pretty simple and straightforward to choose from:
a.) Play in (and maybe win) the giant sand volleyball tournament going on
b.) Read a book or two while relaxing and attempting to get a tan on one of our 5 balconies or by our personal pool
c.) Be social, make some friends I may or may not see ever again, and have a casual Duck Beach fling - which, of course, my brothers know to mean a friendly tossing of a boomerang among friends...ahem....uh, is it hot in here??
d.) All of the above
I'm pretty sure I can make at least one of these options work out, so I'm quite looking forward to the big event for the Spring side of Sprimmer.

Not to be outdone by random people I don't even know, Summer's Sprimmer event will be HUGE - here we come, Barlowpalooza 2011! This Summer Festival boasts the biggest names in the country coming to participate. If everything plays out right and we all actually make it to Zach and Jamie's *NEW* home in the new Midwestern festival hotspot of Rolla, MO, this will be the first fully-attended Barlow reunion in 20 years, give or take 8 years...

I was thinking about it the other day, wondering why other families seem to do reunions all the time, but we never seem to get reunions going in our family, when the answer struck me in all of its greatness - we do have family reunions, which maybe not everyone can get to (like most other families), but we have them. We just treat them like British homes; we give them cool names to really differentiate them. Think of Zachfest 2006, Barlowpalooza 2010, the Great Barlow Caper 2011 (I just made that one up, but I'm starting to think we need t-shirts made now...). We're so beyond the "family reunion of whatever year" style, we like to really celebrate.

All this to say I'm really looking forward to the Great Barlow Caper 2011, coming to you live 4th of July weekend.

Of course, Sprimmer will include much other, smaller scale events, some of which haven't even been thought of yet, all of which will be awesome. But it will end with a bang. Sprimmer's closing event, as of yet, looks to be a lovely week in Utah, visiting both family and friends - the event that ties the friend/family theme of Sprimmer's other blockbuster events. Congress is in Recess all of August, which makes for a very slow, very quiet DC office. So I'm anticipating heading out to Utah for about a week, maybe dragging my parents down to enjoy the rhapsodic eloquence of Cedar City's Shakespeare festival, definitely playing a little volleyball with my dear volleyball-playing friends in Davis County, and absolutely enjoying a good barbeque with the parents every opportunity I can get dad to fire up the grill.

So as you can see, Sprimmer 2011 is going to be pretty awe to the some. And by pretty, I mean amazingly. And by awe to the some, I mean awesome. In case you couldn't figure that out...