Gwilliam Family Trip, Day 2

We packed up our food for the day and headed to the beach.

Tyson is ready to ride the waves.

Lindsey looking cute in her beach wear.

Cute beach girls McKayla, Emily, Megan and Kaitlyn

Conner bought a new skim board for the trip and Logan was excited to try it out.

He also wanted to give surfing a try.

Ruby and Aubrey became fast friends.  To bad Texas and Utah are so far apart.  I'm sure they would spend lots of time together if they lived closer to each other.

The big girls are getting closer to getting in the water.

 A new beach bum decided to join their group. 

Logan and Blake

Tyson thought it was fun to bury grandpa in the sand.

Some of the boys spent time snorkeling.

Can't explain - its just grandpa :)

Always finding a way to sneak in a nap 

Grandma, Scott and Grandpa

I love this picture - all Gwilliam cousins having fun in the ocean.

Brian and Jeff

If they needed a little break from the water there was always badminton.

Next up dinner on the beach.

Followed up by s'mores of course.

They loved them and ate a ton!

One more evening stroll in the water before heading back to the hotel.

Finishing up the day with popcorn in the hotel.

It could not have been a better day!

Gwilliam Family Trip

This year our Gwilliam Family Trip was in Santa Cruz.

We were so excited when the families started arriving from Utah and Texas.

Scott and Ruby

We were all looking foreward to spending the weekend at the beach with our family, but when the piles of everything we had to take started growing I started wondering why I thought a weekend at the beach would be an easy reunion to be in charge of for 30 people.  This wasn't even close to everything we had to bring.

We borrowed a couple of surfboards from a customer of Mike's - thought I'd take a picture of my California surfer girl mom van :)

We stopped to look at the beautiful view of the ocean and were lucky enough to see a lot of dolphins swimming near the shore.  We even saw some jumping out of the water.  It was very cool!

We invited all the Gwilliams to meet us at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to start off our weekend.

Megan, McKayla and Kaitlyn

Blake and Logan couldn't wait to get down to the water.

The older kids rode the Giant Dipper together.

Next we headed to the hotel to get dinner ready.  It was so nice to have so much help throughout the weekend.  Here Megan, Emily and Kaitlyn are frosting cupcakes for me.

The hotel let us use their breakfast room for our dinner, but there weren't enough seats for everyone - fortunately they didn't seem to care.

Aubrey, Brinley and Caroline

The best part about the weekend was watching the cousins having so much fun together.  They seemed to have a great time together from beginning to end.

Ruby and McKayla

Aubrey, Emily, Lindsey and Caroline

Megan, Kaitlyn, Kyle and Conner

Logan and Tyson

The whole group.

The only bad part about the weekend was that my brother Eric got sick right before the trip so his family was not able to come.  We missed them tons and were especially sad because it was going to be the first time we were all together in years.  So the above picture is of the 30 Gwilliam's that were able to make it to Santa Cruz.  Six more Gwilliams from Idaho were sadly not there.

The cousins

They were much more into doing goofy pictures than the more formal ones.

My parents and my siblings - minus Eric :(

I will post day 2 of our trip in another post because I want to include a ton of pictures and blogger is making that difficult for me right now.  Day 2 to follow soon. 

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If you look close above the arched window over our front door you'll see our bird nest.

I tried and tried to hose the thing off when I realized they were building a nest right over our front porch, but apparently they were more determined than I was and very quickly we had four baby birds.

Still can't figure out how they were able to build the nest on such a small ledge.

Its been fun to watch them grow.

Lazy Summer Days

Love watching these guys having fun together.

Whether they are spreading their Legos around the living room, playing the piano or battling with the crookneck squash from the garden :)  Cute!

Logan's Week

While Kaitlyn and I were at Girls Camp Logan was lucky enough to go
with the Wrights to their grandparents cabin.

He went on the zipline...

shot his new airsoft gun...

enjoyed time with his best buddies and made new friends...

(Julie's sister and family were visiting from Utah the same week)

rode around on the 4-wheeler...

and had a great time on the lake.

He didn't miss us at all because he was having his
own fun adventures in the great outdoors.

Thanks to the Wrights, Seels and Monson's for making Logan's week so fun!!!

Kaitlyn's View of Camp

I just got around to looking at the pictures that Kaitlyn took while she was at
camp and thought I would share some of them.

Kaitlyn, Joanne and Kara on the bus ride up to camp.

Joanne on a huge folding chair that one of their leaders brought. 

 The view at the beginning of their overnight hike.

At the dropoff point just before they are ready to set out on
their 1st backpacking adventure.

Hiking :)

The yummy hiking food

I'm not sure how they had enough energy to hike the second day, because most of her pictures are of the three of them taking pictures of themselves in the tent.  I'm just posting a few of the many pictures they took.

So glad Kaitlyn went to camp and had such a great time with her friends.