Thursday, July 29, 2010

family reunion: part I

In the middle of July there was a family reunion for my mom's mom's side of the family ;) It was in Paso Robles, which is near the central coast of California (in "wine country"). My aunt & uncle live there and hosted the reunion this year. It started on a Friday evening but we had gotten there on Thursday so we had all day on Friday to hang out. We ended up driving to Morro Bay, which is only about 30 mins from Paso. It was cold at the beach! The water was freezing, the air chilly, & the breeze was cool... yet there were still people swimming!

This is Morro Rock. Isn't it beautiful and different? This is a favorite place of mine, I just think it's beautiful here!


There were squirrels everywhere and they were FAT. I mean, honestly... they have gotten more than their fair share of human food! This one was eating an M&M.

If you look in front of Nolan here you can see a seagull- he LOVED them. He plopped himself down right here and was perfectly content watching & pointing at " da buuuuuwds" (as he would say)

I cannot believe it... a miracle took place while we were at the beach! BOTH of my boys sat near each other, sat still, and (sort of) looked at the camera for a picture. This a momentous occasion. You would think since I am a photographer my kids would be used to getting their picture taken & cooperate but that is not the case... they usually run the other way when I get my camera out & it takes me at least 20 tries before I get something decent. This was the 3rd picture I snapped and I am in love :)

Right after I snapped the above picture a squirrel ran right up to them (in fact if you look closely you can see it entering the frame above on the bottom right hand corner). I actually love this picture too, it's just adorable how they are both looking at the squirrel!

The boys wanted to put their feet in the water until they realized how cold it was. Sean had fun playing "chase" with the waves & running away from them whenever they would break on shore.

Don't they look thrilled to be taking a photo with their mommy? Yeah, they are more upset that I am making them stand still but in all honesty I believe I said (out of frustration) at some point that day "I give up! I will never have a cute picture of me & both boys and I am just going to have to get used to that!" Ha! I suppose there will be a day when they will be old enough to sit still & smile for a picture with me... but isn't that the same age that they become embarrassed of their moms?? Sigh. Maybe my boys will never be embarrassed of me (wishful thinking & a far-fetched idea, I know, but a girl can dream!)

Dathan, on the other hand, has about a gazillion great photos of himself with the boys (of course I'm not jealous!)

Nolan decided to see what sand tasted like. You can see how he felt about that...

Sean was being "crawly sand monster dude" or something like that. He's very creative with his super-hero names he comes up with ;)

We left Morro Bay and headed to my aunt & uncle's house for the family's meet & greet dinner. My cousin Mandi also has 2 sons who are very close in age to my boys (in fact these two are only 3 weeks apart) and it was fun to watch them play together. Here are the two water babies sharing Buzz Lightyear.

People. Talking & Eating. Very exciting ;)

I'm not sure how two very goofy people (aka myself & Dathan) could produce such a serious child, but I love it!

See? We were really excited to be there ;)

So was Sean!

Really all of my photos from that night are of my siblings & cousins. We were all sitting together eating and snapping goofy pictures of everyone or trying to photo bomb each other. My cousin Korrie (who is 18) LOVES the camera and so I have enough photos to do an entire post of just her ;) We all have a lot of fun when we get together. My (1st) cousins & my brothers & I are all really close in age (The oldest is 31 & the youngest is 18) so it's fun to be in the same place in life as each other, even though personality wise we are all so different (but like to be goofy & have fun).

Oh yeah, they had everyone wear name tags so we could try to put names with faces. We decided to write how we were related to the "matriarchs" of the family (my grandma & her aunt were the most mature family members there). We call my grandma "Big Hair" so all of us grandkids wrote something about "Big Hair" on ours (mine said "Erica: Big Hair's middle daughter's only daughter"). Then all the in-laws wrote something along the lines of "Dathan: Married into this mess." It was really funny... maybe you had to be there?

3 comments:

Peyton's Pages said...

I love that picture of both of the boys!I also love the serious picture of Nolan. He is the cutest ever!!

Nancy said...

I wish I had a big family!! That squirrel is one of the cutest I've ever seen :) And so smart choosing an M & M!

Unknown said...

oh my goodness I literally cannot get over how fat that squirrel is!!