Family Vacation

This year for our family vacation we wanted to go somewhere that we could spend time together as a family without a lot of outside distractions. With Bryson graduating from high school and getting ready to head off to Basic Training with the Marines next week we really wanted to spend some quality time together. So we rented a house in Palm Springs...yes, Palm Springs in July (HOT) and made sure it had a pool in the backyard. That way we could just hang out and enjoy being together as a family. We've decided this is the way to go...it was awesome!!

There was a flat screen TV out on the back patio but about the only thing we watched on it was the women's World Cup Finals match. This was probably the most soccer most of us had ever watched but it was exciting to see the US represented...too bad we lost. :)

 There was a grapefruit tree in the backyard as well and Brian became obsessed with getting every last ripe grapefruit off that tree...even though he was the only one eating them. :) Once he picked all the low hanging ones, he found a stick to get up to the higher ones and knock them down. One or two bounced off his head but he managed to steer clear of most of the falling grapefruits. :)

 The funny thing about living in the Ipod/Iphone age is that you can play games with each other without actually talking or interacting other than a little smack talk now and then. I'm not encouraging this way of playing games, but we found ourselves all playing "Words with Friends" (basically online scrabble) with each other while sitting in the same room. Almost every night after coming in from the last swim of the day and showering we all had wicked games of "Words with Friends" going with each other (except for Brian who does not have an Ipod or an Iphone but didn't feel left out in the least because he was probably out getting more grapefruit).

 Bryson is so strong that he could lift his body out of the water and go up into a handstand. I got him on video doing it, but the next day when I got my camera out and asked him to do it, he and Brian had just gotten back from the gym and his arms were a little tired from lifting weights. He still got this far, he just couldn't get all the way into a handstand. (That's in the deep end so he didn't have the floor of the pool to push off of...just brute arm and ab strength.) I'm sure I could totally do that if I tried...hahahahahahaha.

 Since I had my camera out the kids wanted me to put it on sports continuous mode and do a fun photo shoot. I was having a heart attack the whole time thinking they were going to land on each other but they never did...they just came awfully close a few times. :)

 I thought for sure Bryson was landing on Hailey in the picture above but you can see in the picture below that Hailey got out of the danger zone before Bryson landed.

 Brian was very helpful and kept the floaties out of the way during their trickery. :)

 Back home after the trip.

It was so great to spend a week with Bryson before he leaves. We love him so much and it was so nice to have the entire family together for some uninterrupted bonding time!