Saturday, August 1, 2015

Family Time...with the Davis side of things...


I'm pretty sure I've complained about my self inflicted exile from my side of the family before.  Long story short, we live far away from any of my relatives.  We don't see them very often.  We are very blessed to have two of Will's brothers and one of his sisters living near us.  We love the Anderson side of our family and are so grateful to have them close.

The Davis side...we could see more of them.  Sigh.

This summer was a Davis summer.  We drove down to Southern California to spend a week with the Davis side of our family.  It was quite the gathering.  My aunt lives in Southern California.  We had family gathered from Hawaii, Utah, Texas and Maine!  The kids got to see cousins, aunts and uncles we haven't seen in a while.  



We played games and took group pictures.


The kids swam in the pool every second they could--only being pried from the water for reapplications of sunscreen and to stuff food in their mouths.



AND WE WENT TO DISNEYLAND.  Yes, we hauled all the kids out to Disneyland and waited through crazy crowds in not-too-unpleasant heat.  It was the first time any of the cousins from Maine had ever been to a Disney park.  Florida is too far away and California is even further...forget about Paris. 



We let Lorien go off with a cousin from Utah, Genet, and I only saw her once at lunch time.  The other cousins stayed close by and had a blast waiting in lines--er--riding rides.  



We got there around 10 in the morning and stayed through fireworks.  We ended up leaving the park after midnight.  I think my fitbit said I walked over 20 thousand steps for the day.  It was exhausting fun.


One of the results of our day at Disney was all of the boy cousins getting light sabers.  Many-a-epic battle were waged in Aunt Colleen's back yard.  


Lorien taught the little girls how to dive...or fall into the pool face first.  


Grandpa Davis spent time with grandchildren he doesn't get to see very often.  He took some to the girls to the movies one day when the moms, dads and boys were out and he teased every grandchild as much as he could.  




It was a busy trip but wonderful seeing so much family.  I don't know why it has to be so much work to get together...but so it must.  


I think we have an unwritten family policy that no family vacations can be completely relaxing or easy.  Case in point--on this trip we stayed in an empty apartment Will's company has for traveling sales people.  It was awesome to have a free place to stay every night...it was not awesome to drive an hour back and forth every day to see our family.  We never made it home before 10 or 11 o'clock at night.  But we were grateful for the savings...because we did Disneyland and that was one heck of a chunk of change.  There were beds enough for all to sleep comfortably and we had the place to ourselves.  Thank you Complete Solar!



No comments: