What we've been up to...

We got to Oregon on a Thursday night and spent a few days in Beaverton. We then spent 4 days in Lincoln City at an amazing beach house that my Grandma found. This place was the best, it is less than a year old, three stories with seating in the kitchen for all 23 of us! There were 7 plasma TV's, a playstation, a pool table, foos ball table, an arcade game, a hot tub, and a massage chair! We were glad for all of these amenities as the beach was pretty cold and windy most of the time we were there, but there was still plenty for us all to do! Aunt Shelly and Uncle Joe were gracious enough to buy all of the food while we were there and it was all wonderful, the meals couldn't have been more perfect! It was a lot of fun to hang out with our cousins and Aunts and Uncles that we don't get to see often enough, it's amazing how we have all grown up. We decided to meet up every other year like this and I can't wait to do it again!

There is nothing more precious than a Daddy and his little girl

Fun at the beach!
Having fun in the house. No one knew what a great pool player Granny is, I think she won most games that she played!

More Oregon...

Shelly, Neil, and Eric put together a fun treasure hunt for the kids on the beach. Here they are finding the map and attempting to dig up the treasure box!

Eventually, Eric had to finish uncovering it because it was buried so deep! The kids had a great time with all of the fun loot!

On the way home from the beach we stopped at Tillamook Cheese Factory to see the cheese making process. The best part is all the samples at the end and of course we had to finish off the day with some Tillamook Ice Cream!
Most of our group watching the packaging of the cheese, what fun!

We had some fireworks when we got back that night

The day after we got home from the beach, we spent the day at the Oregon zoo, truly one of the best zoos ever! We all had a great time in the perfect 80 degree weather. (I don't have many pictures though because Andy uploaded them to his work computer which crashed promptly upon returning home. The IT guys are still trying to recover some of them!)

After the zoo we managed to gather all 23 of us for a family picture, with no photographer! Thanks to Andy and Brandon and their great cameras and Aunt Shelly for buying a tripod, we managed to get some decent shots. By the end of our little photo shoot, 2 or 3 of the kids had fallen and scraped their knees and both babies were crying and ready to eat. We're very pleased that we were able to get what we got. (These will be in another post!)

On Saturday morning Meredith, Meghan, and I and our families, were able to meet up with Aunt Marsha at Webber's (a favorite breakfast spot of our grandpa's). Aunt Marsha treated us to a great breakfast, it was fun seeing her and being able to catch up a little! After a week of trying to track down a Nintendo Wii, Andy was able to find one after breakfast and buy it with all of it's accessories, tax free! Needless to say Saturday was spent breaking in the Wii. We had a great time on our trip, the weather was so nice, it was hard coming back to our dreadful heat but it was time. We can't wait to go back!

Ahhh, Family Pictures!

Ashton Family - July 2008
Stone Family - July 2008

As I stated in my vacation post, we managed to take pictures of 23 of us, with no photographer. I'd say we even got some decent shots, it was quite a fete! Here is a sampling of some of the pictures. (Thanks Andy and Brandon!)
Brynley and Siobhan watching the ducks

Some of the adults trying to get the kids to smile!

Grandma with all 6 of her grand kids!

Two handsome men

We sure do love our sweet kids!

Cannon Beach!

We just got back from an awesome trip to Oregon. Not only did we have a blast at our family reunion but we also got to visit with my good friend Misty! Her parents have a vacation home on the Oregon coast and I was so excited that our Oregon trips would overlap slightly so that we could see each other and have our kids meet. Misty has two kids, Lexia who is 6 and Lily who will be two in October.

Misty and I, it was really windy!

Misty and I go way back, we were roommates our freshman year of college. We didn't start out roommates, we were both paired with some very interesting girls and half way through the year we decided we needed to live together and so we switched roommates. That was the best decision we could have made. We've hardly been able to see each other in the last 6 years years, every time we see each other it seems to be for a quick visit. 3 years ago we had a 9 hour layover (overnight) in Chicago so she and her husband picked us up from the airport so that we could hang out and sleep at their house. This time was only about 3 hours but it was so fun to catch up a little. It's so nice to have friends like this, we were sad that Tom wasn't there, he had to work.

Hayden and Lex had a great time running around on the beach together, climbing rocks, and feeding seagulls!

Eric and Neil

As I have been typing out a post about our trip to Oregon, it is getting soooo long so I decided to split some things up. Two of my cousins, Eric and Neil, are quite a bit younger than the rest of us and it was fun to hang out with them and see how they have grown up. They were so sweet to our kids. From playing pool or going in the hot tub with them to burying a treasure chest on the beach (Which they ended up having to dig out since it was buried so deep) these guys were the best sports!

Hayden has always reminded us of Eric in that they look a lot alike. It probably has something to do with the glasses but they are similar none the less. I love this picture of the two of them together. The kids had a blast hanging out with Eric and the adults had fun playing games with him at night. We played Catch Phrase and Eric got a word that he couldn't really describe. We kept saying relate it to something else or can you think of something similar and all he could say was, "a really funny sounding word." It turned out the word was "negligee", the rest of us started busting up and I was even on the floor laughing. I am so glad that my kids got to meet Eric and get to know him a little bit.

Eric built a great sand castle at the beach, it was an Eskimo village with igloos, ice fisherman, and a dog sledding team, very creative!

Neil, who just turned 18, was really fun to have around as well. The kids all smothered him and he didn't even seem to mind. What kind of 18 year old would be that cool with a million little kids chasing after him? I don't know many. Neil's a lifeguard so he was gracious enough to stand guard at the hot tub while the parents were inside. He let the kids run and jump on him, he played with them at the beach, pushed strollers at the zoo, went shopping with us and generally seemed to be a good sport, luckily he had his phone and could text his friends all day long! One day while we were shopping, it was Meredith, Meghan, Neil, and I and I and 3 of the kids, they were running around the store and had decided to call him fatty. He leaned over to me and said it sounds like they're calling me daddy, these people all probably think I am a teenage polygamist with 3 wives and 3 kids. I'm sure that is just what they thought! We also had fun playing games with Neil, especially his creative Scattergories answers like when it asked for a tool, he used the name of a person and said that person was the biggest tool he had ever met. And for a color that started with "F" he said, "furple", hmmm.... And thanks to Neil, we are now the proud owners of a Wii, he somehow convinced Andy to get one and so they hunted them down all week and we finally got one.

Brynley, Caroline and Neil at Mo's

Thanks Neil and Eric! We love you guys, convince your parents to send you to Disneyland in October, it would be so fun!!

The digestive tract of a 3-month old...

You may look at this sweet, innocent face and think, "what could be wrong with his digestive tract?" Well, let me tell you, he may be sweet and innocent but he can sure puke! Grandma even got to experience the ricochet of his vomit as it splashed off of me and all over her! Zac has reflux, thankfully however, it does not cause him much pain as it did for Hayden. Zac will be very content and then suddenly he is projectile vomiting! I spend most days with spit up stains all over my shirt, pants, shoes, you name it. Well, I wanted to post a picture of what he did to my couch yesterday. More of the couch would be covered if not for the fact that I was sitting there and was drenched as well, he even managed to spit over the couch and get a huge spot on the floor. Seriously, you can see the outline of the side of my body and the puddle on the cushion that landed between my legs!

Now if the vomiting wasn't enough, Zac goes a long time between his bowel movements. Last week, after 11 days, he was getting really cranky to the point of being in pain. Many may not realize that a breastfed baby can go up to 20 days without a bowel movement as long as the baby is acting normal. I knew when Zac got cranky that this was not normal and so we took him to the doctor, an X-ray would show a huge blockage which we would need to begin to treat with Dark Karo syrup. I was very proud when Zac had a bowel movement on his own that evening, before trying the Karo syrup, I think the doctor's poking and prodding may have loosened things up a bit. Needless to say, it was a pretty big one for such a little guy! It has now been 4 days since that episode and he has yet to poop again, hopefully he will soon!

Those of you reading this who do not yet have kids, there will be a time when you too will be excited about poop!