California Fun July 21-25

Tuesday, July 21 was a busy day. First up was family photo shoot.

(You may want to click on the pictures to see them bigger.)

My whole entire family minus Nathan.

My parents with all of their 15 grandchildren 

My parents with their 6 children. 

Me and my 8 children.

My older brother Ben and his wife, Janet.

 My younger brother, Brady and his wife and kids.

My mom and her 4 girls. 

Samuel and Spencer being silly afterward. 

My 3 boys

Kylie

Samuel ready to go to the next event: the temple.

Hanging out after the temple sessions.

The 5 teen grandchildren did baptisms for the dead and then the adults did sealings. My family does this every Christmas and summer but this is the first time I've been here for it. It was so special!

Next we went to a Sacramento Rivercats game. It was so much fun!

Wednesday we stayed home again and worked on the horse corral floor and making a walking trail in the morning followed by games after lunch.

First Brady and Chase pulled boards off of a chunk of our old deck.

Next Thomas scraped the boards clean.

Then the boards get passed to Dad and Misty holds them while he cuts them to the right size.

Brandyn and Spencer were in the shed nailing the new boards in.

The old horse corral under remodel.

Digging tree roots out of the way of the trail. 

Getting ready to cut a tree down.

Spencer and Brady play ping pong. Horseshoes are in the background.

Yummy snacks to munch on while we play games at the table on the side deck.

Nertz tournament in the living room.

Right before dinner we went to the neighbor's farm to see their chickens, goats, and horse.

Dad and Ben use the log splitter and Brady, Kylie, Alexis, and Chase stack the chopped wood.

Thomas got to be the operator of the machine. I'm glad nobody got their fingers cut off!

Samuel wanting to go for a walk down our road.

He's saying, "Tum on, Mom!"

Thursday night we roasted marshmallows. Yum!

Friday we helped haul away logs, branches and sticks from a tree my dad cut down. Samuel got so dirty!

The kids built forts and played Nephites and Lamanites. This was their bank where they kept their rocks they used as money to buy food and weapons

Lexi's store she's showing me. It's hard to see, but there were pine needles, and assorted pine cones and fun nature things like that.

Tom's store was similar: piles of pine needles, berries, moss, leaves, etc.  They all had a great time for hours on Friday and Saturday.

The view of the back of the house on the way down the hill from the forts.

California Fun!! July 2- 20

I don't know if I'm going to scrapbook these photos so I decided to put a whole bunch on the blog. Sorry if I bore you. My kids look at the blog all the time so this is mostly for them to remember this wonderful vacation by. We made precious memories.

The cousins watching Studio C on the porch swing.

The only pictures I took of Fourth of July: food. :) The night before my mom and I took the kids to Jackson to see the fireworks and had a good time eating Cracker Jacks and goofing off more than seeing the fireworks.

Eating hamburgers and hot dogs outside.

Kylie made choco mallo brownies with fireworks on the top in M&M's.

Samuel loves to chase the neighbor's chickens that come into my parents' yard.

Spencer teaching Kaitlyn how to shoot the BB gun.

My turn! I hit the Sprite can on the very first try!

The two cans we aimed at.

The 3 little kids playing with my old kitchen set on the back patio. They spent the majority of each day out here and I loved it. I could hear them play through the screen door and rarely had to check on them. It was so nice not to worry about neighbors or streets.

Kaitlyn asleep on the stairs when she was sick. She started this long fever and horrible cough illness that passed to each of us. 

Samuel supposedly sleeping in my old crib. He loved to climb out onto my dresser and get into the bag of animal crackers and candy corn I had put there leftover from our airplane ride.

Kaitlyn and Makenna wearing my and my sister's old dance costumes.

Celebrating Aunt Rish's birthday the day she drove in from Wyoming.

 Three cousins going to sleep.

 Singing around the piano beautiful church music.

There's always a project to do around the property. Here some kids help Papa haul leaves.

Samuel loved Aunt Lori and it was such a break for me to have someone else he would go to. Plus I thought it was sweet seeing him form relationships, trust, and accept help from my siblings and parents.

I had a fever on Alexis' birthday so she was left to make her cake mostly on her own. She decorated it to have green grass, a blue fountain in the middle, and a cobblestone path.

She's 10 years old!

I got her a watch.

Mama reading to Samuel one night.

Our official family vacation where all my siblings were here and we did something fun everyday was from July 16-23.  Friday, July 17 was the first fun day. We went to Lake Amador and had a great time going down the slide and hanging out. 

A view of the lake and diving platform

 My dad on the slide

 Thomas, Trish, and Makenna

 Me, Lori, Kaitlyn

 Look at that splash!

Tami and Shane

 Me

 My mom and Makenna

 Toad and Alexis playing in the sand.

 Kaitlyn

Aunt Lori and Makenna going down backwards.

Kaitlyn going down with Samuel.

 Who could this be?

 Makenna and Aunt Lori

Aunt Misty with her niece Paige

Mama and my baby Samuel

Hanging out in the shade.

Papa

Saturday we spent the morning putting a new floor in the old horse corral and the afternoon playing games.

Ripping out the old floor.

 Spencer throwing a horseshoe

 Tetherball

The whole time we worked and played we had a compilation of everyone's favorite songs playing. I missed this, but evidently one of my sisters took a picture of my parents dancing to one of theirs.

 Sunday we all went to church together--the ward we grew up in. Afterward my dad taught us about family history using a presentation he put together.

Monday, July 20 we went to Pine Acres Resort where they had a pool, sprayground, mini golf, nature trails, and other activities.

Aunt Lori with her nieces Makenna, Kaitlyn, and Tad.

Getting lunch

Views of the sprayground and pool from the picnic tables.

Makenna and Samuel playing at the sprayground.

Another view of the pool from someone else's camera. And another picture of lunch.

 For FHE we watched a movie projected on the side of the house. We had popcorn and chocolate and it was so much fun!!

To be continued...