Adventures from Z to A: Family Reunion 2014

Once a year all of my siblings along with my parents gather together for a super fun vacation. We look forward to this vacation all year. It is noisy with so many kids and can get crazy, but it is fun to all be together. I especially enjoy the time at night after kids are in bed to talk and play games. The kids love having cousins to play with from morning till night. This year we headed to a beach about four hours away where we all stayed in a nine bedroom house within walking distance of the beach.

Our vacation started out rough with all my kids catching a virus the night before we were to leave. We ended up leaving a few hours after everyone else to make sure it was just a 24 hour little bug and we weren't bringing sickness to the vacation. Talmage has two other cousins born within two months of him so we definitely didn't want to get the babies sick. Little did we know that this virus they had was not a 24 hour bug. Although they weren't showing symptoms anymore, Lili didn't get her appetite back until the end of the vacation so she was most likely not feeling well. Luckily no one else got sick on vacation, but the bug hit me as we were leaving and slowly made its way around the rest of the family over the next few weeks like a plague. I'm sure a few of my siblings were cursing our family!

The four hour drive was also rough on Talmage and Lili. Talmage especially just doesn't do cars well. We also had to sit at a ferry for an hour and that wasn't pretty for either baby. We finally arrive at the vacation spot late at night with screaming babies, exhausted parents, and hyper boys. What an entrance.

We spent most of the vacation at the beach or the pool in the back yard, but here are few pictures when we were just hanging out.

I'm holding my nephew Teddy who is 2 months younger than Talmage and of course bigger than Talmage.

Lili is starting to interact more with Talmage.

There were plenty of babies to hold and love on. This is my niece Sam taking her turn feeding Talmage.

I'm not sure how much Talmage liked all the attention!

Grandpa with the three babies. Talmage is he oldest and of course the smallest.

Lili and Bryson (one month apart) love their grandma and both love to be held by her.

My boys are early risers and so every morning they woke up before everyone else. All the boys slept in one room, so this meant all five were up early ready to play (I'm not sure where Gavin was in this below picture.) Zane and I would keep them quiet with (I Pad/Phone time.)

Sneaking some TV time in the afternoon after a full morning of swimming.

Both these girls had birthdays while on vacation!

Daddy and kid time

Playing with cousins

Cooking Time!

Posing for the camera

Super hero Gavin just can't keep a shirt on.

Game time- Zane and I really only played one or two games. Our two babies and crazy boys keep us busy.

Story time at bedtime. All the cousins would gather around while I read stories. In the past, vacations have been really hard at bedtimes for our family. After all the outside time though, my boys fell in bed exhausted and we didn't have as many fights.