Summer Fun with Cousins!

The first weekend of August we road tripped it down to Oregon for our annual family time. This year Brian's sister and family were here with us for about 10 days. Yay!

Joy in Grandma's rocking chair!

But that also kind of meant some close quarters, the girls sleeping in the closet in our room!  Good thing Grandma and Grandpa's house is big with room to play!

Hope helping Grandma sew

The first order of business was a graveside service for Great Grandpa, who passed away last summer, the last of the great grandparents.  We got to see all the cousins but one and afterwards enjoyed ice cream in the park. 

Me and my girls!

Playing with cousins was so much fun!  We had two good days with them here before the plague descended on the house...

Hope and Cassia

It's so super fun for me to see them wearing their cousin's hand me downs!  And I know my sister-in-law likes shopping our collection from Africa so she doesn't have to shop while she's home.

Grandma got my boys some paints as cousins are still a bit young

We did get one afternoon at the local water park where we had a ball!

My Noah swimming in the lazy river

Everyone had lots of fun going round and round in the lazy river, Noah is a pro in his life jacket, but he swims pretty well too.

Uncle Joel and Cousin Cassia

We took all the little kids except baby Cassia on the water slide.  Hope got scared by rocking back and forth and didn't want to go again, but Joy and William were all over it!  "Again?"

Uncle Joel and Cousin William on the waterslide!

 

The girls are total water babies!

And after that, the puking started.  Joel and Allison had gone to the coast for a night and he got sick as well as Noah at Grandma's house.  So we had 6 kids to take care of and we were so scared they would all get sick!

Cory loves his baby cousin Cassia! 6 years makes a difference!

We had one day of respite and enjoyed playing on the lawn.  It was HOT here and there's no AC in the house.

My cutest nephew William!

Auntie Allison and Uncle Joel took our boys and their kids out to some water falls and then Cory got sick in the car on the way home... it was all down hill from there.

Uncle Joel did a lot of reading (Hope)

The little ones who hadn't been affected yet enjoyed reading and a tea party with Grandma.

Tea party with Grandma! A new tradition!

Williams frequent mode of transportation!

Sadly we missed out on visiting with three sets of friends due to all the illness.  But we ended up with more family bonding time... over sickness!  Ugh!  All told it took us over a week to get better and poor Joel and Allison had sick kids all the way home to Africa.  I'm not sure which is worse, poo-splosions or vomit on an airplane.

Almost all the cousins watching cartoons, just missing Cassia

This is how we entertained the kids while we waited to take one last family picture. And that will have to wait for a later date to be processed.

Now if I can just get my phone and blog to play nice I will have more pictures... but it's a headache and a half so it may have to wait until we get home.  However, if you'd like more real time updates follow me over on Instagram!