Family trip!

We had the wonderful opportunity to take our family out to California this past weekend for a very special occasion! My little nephew, Evan, (oldest son of my brother Aaron) chose to be baptized!

It was such a great weekend and so nice that so many of my family members were able to come out and spend time together! We missed Britt and her family, though!
(pretty sweet group of cousins, huh?!)It was a LONG drive to say the least, with kids so young! We split the 14 hours up over two days, which helped a lot. The girls would NOT sleep in the car, though. As soon as one would fall asleep, the other would start crying and wake the other up and vice versa. It was horrible! The drive home was 10 times better, though, so we were very grateful for that!

Other than the not so fun drive out, everything else was just fantastic! We spent a lot of time at the beach, enjoyed some delicious food, and most importantly, lots of talking and hanging out with family! We obviously HAD to hit up Splash Cafe at Pismo Beach, because chances are, I would have died without my fix of it!
(Kaiya opted for a corndog -- is she nuts?!)The girls really loved the beach too! Not so much the freezing water, but Kaiya sure loved chasing the birds, and walking on the pier with her cousins. She also could have dug a hole to China with all the digging she did!
(apparently sand sticks to EVERYTHING, **Kaiya just saw this picture and started saying, "ewww, it's a booger right there, RIGHT THERE!" funny girl!)And Taylor, well, she could have eaten the sand for a week! I'm pretty sure she has digested some beautiful sand castle or something in that belly of hers with all the hands full of sand that she ate! Oh well, when at the beach... (oh and to add to the fun of the drive, Taylor broke her first top tooth -- yikes! but it sure is cute up there!)
Taylor got pretty tired on her first beach experience, but what better place to fall asleep than sitting by the ocean, wind in your hair, wrapped up in someone's arms! Sounds good to me!
(oh, and when you forget the hat, sand buckets work great!)The older kids all enjoyed lots of boogie boarding, sliding, and of course throwing all types of balls (there are a lot of boys in this family)! The highlight of the trip, of course, was Ev's baptism. It was a wonderful evening for such a special boy! He was so mature and handsome in his suit, and took his baptism very seriously for such a young boy! We could not be more proud of Ev and just love that little guy to pieces! What a special and most important day of his life. I think he will take away lots of memories from such a special day! We will too!
It was also very fun to spend the last few days of my SIL's pregnancy with her and my brother! They will be having their 4th little guy in just a few short days!! We are so excited for them!

So, we are home now from all this traveling and it's nice to get back into the swing of things here! Now, on to laundry, cleaning, planting our yard, FINALLY getting around to finishing decorating the house, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on! It's going to be busy around here! But we have lots of great memories from this trip that we will cherish!