California Love... Part 1

This year was my 10 year High School Reunion. Eeekk! I'm old! Anyway, it happen to be the same day as my annual family reunion on my mom's side. Normally we don't go but since we had two reasons we dropped some dough and bought the tickets. Prepare for the barrage of pictures, but 14 days with Grandma Dee calls for some pics!

Welcome Home - Emily and I left the day after Dave's birthday, but he had to stay a few more days and get some work done. Someone has to pay those bills. You might notice there are no pics of the plane trip there. Mostly because I was handling Emily by myself and she decided to puke on the plane. Good times with a baby who gets motion sickness. Joy. Anyway, we got there safely and had a blast.

We wasted no time hitting the stores. Emily loves boots, especially these pink ones!

And she loved my parents dog, Roxy. Roxy loved the attention.

Santa Barbara - Day 2 we woke up early and caught the train to Santa Barbara. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get there. It was Emily's first time to ride a train and she had a blast. So did Grandma Dee. Silly girls!

Here is Emily with her cousin Destiny.

We took quite a large group of family with us. That's kind of how we have always done things in my family. Where there's one, there's ten! This is my sister Alyssa, Aunt Vicky, Mom, Em, Me, Aunt Cheryl, Destiny, cousin Christie, and my cousin Steve and his girlfriend were there too but they were asleep on the sand when we took this picture.

We seriously under-packed for this trip. It was barely 70 degrees in August!

Two days later Dave arrived. My mom was so sweet, she wanted to celebrate his birthday with all our family. So Emily baked him his favorite cake!

Happy Birthday Daddy! We love you!

The next day my dad made plans to take Dave golfing so we took the opportunity to go hang out with my Aunt Pam and her kids, Delaney and Ramsey (Rocky and Riley were there too but they are 15 and 17 so they were busy being teenage boys). Here's me with my two favorite girls.

I'll try to make this succinct. This is my friend Nina and her baby boy, Liam who was a mere 5 weeks old! She is the niece of my Aunt Pam's husband. She and I are the same age so when we were growing up, my cool Aunt Pam use to take us together to do fun things. We hadn't seen each other in at least 10 years. So cool to hang out again!

Delaney surfing in the pool.

They really have a water slide in their backyard! Now you know why we so badly wanted to go hang out there! Emily was such a big girl she went down twice with Mommy.

REUNION DAY!!! - Part 1 of reunion day was at my Aunt Karen's house. It was a beautiful day and a great turn out. Here is a pic of all the Campbell grand kids (and spouses and their kids).

This is me and my Grandma Jean, who Emily is named after.

This is where Emily spent a large majority of the party, fast asleep upstairs. Poor thing had a big week up to this point.

When she wasn't sleeping she was chasing Oreo around the pool. It was the funniest thing, the dog was afraid of Emily! But she was persistent.

Emily and her Uncle Chrissy!

Reunion Day part 2 was my High School Reunion. My two oldest and bestest friends Stephany and Erin came in for the event. We even took prom style pics on the stairs before heading the the event. No pictures from the event mostly because we were too busy talking/dancing/drinking.

This was the only picture from the event and you can see any background is clearly cropped out. Here's the thing though, I graduated with 365 students, so a large group pic was not on the agenda. We did have a great turn out though.

After the party we headed back to Chris and Holly new house for some Nintendo Wii Just Dance action. Good times. Good times.

We concluded with breakfast at Denny's the next morning. Here is Stephany and her husband Nathan. They have an adorable baby boy named Beck who will be 1 in February.

This is Erin with my Mom and Emily.

This is semi out-of-order, because the next day we went to the water park. But here are some pics from the beach instead...

Ultimate Frisbee with Alyssa, Dave, my dad, me, my cousins Steve and Jason, and Chris.

My Aunt Pam brought Delaney and Ramsey to the beach that day so we could see them one more time and mostly so Delaney could see Dave. She is IN LOVE with him! It's so funny.

Me and my honey!

Me and my 2nd favorite girl ever!

And yep, you guess it. The strap eventually broke! Sorry Dad.

Dave spent the morning digging for sand crabs.

Great fun. More to come!

California Love... Part 2

Water Park - The morning after my high school reunion we went to Six Flags Hurricane Harbor with Grandma Dee, Aunt Alyssa, Uncle Chris, Aunt Holly and cousin Jason. Daddy was still around for this too! (Like I said, where there's 1, there's 10!)

Emily was not a big fan of the rides.

Uncle Chris and Aunt Holly were so good with Emily! They took her to play in the kiddie land while Dave and I went on some rides together. All the big kids went on some rides too. The one I remember most clearly (and wish I could block out) was this one called Tornado. Picture a giant funnel laying on it's side and a tube that shoots you out into the mouth of it. Then you swish up one side and back and fourth until you come shooting out the narrow end of the funnel. Ok, well, now picture a 4 person inner-tube shaped like a plus sign with three 210+lb men on 3 of the sides and me on the fourth. Ya! It was that bad. I thought I was going to die. We came shooting out with such force that I nearly flipped out of the raft and came tumbling down. Then when we went back up the other side I am staring straight up at Dave and my brother directly overhead thinking they are about to come toppling down on me. So when we finally came flying out the funnel safely into the pool I asked the guy what the weight limit was on that thing. He said 600lbs. Well, safe to say I am not negative pounds so we were well over the limit. PARKS - During our time there the weather was so perfect (and by perfect, I mean unusually cool for that time of the year. Mid 70's for 2 straight weeks). So in 14 days we went to the park about 8 times. Here are some park pics.

Kisses? No thanks Uncle Chris! Haha!

Here are some pics of Emily's human jungle gym after dinner one night at Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa's house.
Too much sugar? NO!!!!! (Dripping with sarcasm)
Underwood Farms - After Dave left Mom and Alyssa and I took Emily to Underwood Farms. It's this little place right near my parents where you can pick your own fruits and veggies. They also have a petting zoo and pumpkin farm in the fall. This was quite possibly my favorite day of the whole trip.

Emily picking raspberries. She ate more than we took home. It was awesome!

Family Time - Here are just a few pics with the family in our last few days. Grandpa made her a tent in the backyard.

Right Grandpa, you think this is nap time? Think again!

My Grandparents with Emily. So precious to see them with her.

Can't type. Crying right now...

Who is this kid and how did she get so silly?

Last pic. You made it! And we made it home safely. Thank you to all my family who made this trip so amazing! We love you and we miss you already! Come visit!