Family Reunion Part 2

This might go down as one of my longest posts ever! (Feel free to just skim through it-I just want all the details for my blog book at the end of the year.) The "Krohn" Reunion is on the same rotation as the "Macbeth" Reunion, so we were lucky to get to see both sides of our families this year. For the Krohn Reunion, we spent a week at Cannon Beach. We lucked out with traveling this year, because both reunions were close to home for us. The drive to Cannon Beach was supposed to take 3 1/2 hours, but ended up taking much longer! Neither Tate nor Blake was loving being in the car, despite the DVD player, so we took lots of stops so John and I could survive without listening to too much crying and yelling. But, I am definitely not complaining because the rest of John's family came in from Utah-that's a drive I'm not ready to make with my children. We had a great week together catching up with family and enjoying the beach, shopping, hiking, and eating:)

We stayed at the Bull Gull Inn. It is this beautiful, Mexican inspired, place that was about a minute walk to the beach and a five minute walk into downtown to all the shops and bakeries (John's favorite part). We couldn't have been happier with the accommodations.

On our first night there I wanted to have a birthday party for everyone since we're not all together during the year to celebrate and it's a good reason to eat cake! The little kids were so cute surrounding the table and sneaking licks of frosting. We went with a beach theme for the cake as another way to kick off a great week together. If we could have had one thing to change--it would have been the weather. We were hoping for some nice weather since it was August, but this summer sure has been mild and we got one sunny day with the rest being pretty overcast. At least we didn't get rain, and we still had a fun time despite the cooler temperatures.

The rest of these pictures are not necessarily in the correct order as to what we did each day, but you'll get the idea of what our week was like. Tate was in beach heaven. I've never seen a happier kid then Tate was when we got to the beach for the first time. He was so happy running up and down the beach chasing random dogs, throwing the dogs things to fetch, Tate could be loud and no one cared, he could hardly contain himself. It was great!

There was no swimming in the water this trip-way too cold.

John insisted on being buried in the sand . . . he's one happy crab.

Blake getting to feel just how cold the water was-he didn't seem to mind.

Blake should have some more teeth coming through with all the drooling he was doing.Yes, that is another black eye John has. I think if he goes out again people are going to start wondering what's going on at our home:) It's that darn basketball he keeps playing.
Going through all these pictures I noticed I have a thing with putting summer outfits on Blake . . . and socks-totally ridiculous looking?! I feel it's like the socks and sandals fashion rule I was totally breaking. What was I thinking (sorry Blake for making you look not so cool-I won't do it again)?!

One of Tate's other loves this week was Sparky's leashes. It was like the key thing-had to have a leash at all times. Even if Sparky was not on the other end. Only one incident with the leash being excitedly spun around and hitting my eye. I almost had a black eye to match John's.

Here I was thinking it is August and summertime, so I didn't really think about packing warmer clothes for the boys. My mistake. It got pretty cold at night, so I had a good excuse to do some shopping and found Blake this cute hat so he wouldn't get cold at night.

Kris and Kalenn worked on our family reunion t-shirts this year and they were the coolest family reunion shirts I've ever seen! Everyone saw us coming that night where ever we went.

The traditional family dinner together. *Sigh* I love going out to eat just as much as the next person, but not so much with two little kids and not so much with such a large group because that was sure to mean our service was going to be slower. Tate just does not have the attention span to sit and play quietly for longer than maybe 10-15 minutes. And then that just makes the rest of the meal no fun for John or I. Blake started off asleep, but woke up shortly after we got there. Tate did pretty good for the first while, but dinner took close to an hour to get to us and it just wasn't a really good experience for me and we'll just leave it at that.

I took Tate for a walk on the beach while John watched the napping Blake. It was fun to get to go out-just the two of us. Haystack Rock in the background. It was about a 15 minute walk from where we were.

Not sure what's happening with Tate's face in this picture.

A closer look at the cool t-shirts. This is a great candy shop-fresh taffy, fudge, ice cream, I felt the pounds coming on the longer I stayed in that store. Tate helped himself to this candy and then dropped it right after I took the picture. That was disaster that led to a quick pick-up of the broken sucker in hopes of salvaging enough of it so we didn't have to buy another one.

We found a great playground for the boys that night. Blake enjoyed playing with toys while Tate went down the slides.

We all rented these bikes one morning so we could ride out to the tide pools and check out all the cool sea life. John and I came to Cannon Beach after Tate was born and rented these same bikes. I didn't think it would be such a big deal to have the trailer on the back; but that extra 25 pounds made that bike ride that much more of a workout. I got to pull the sleeping Blakey. First stop on the bike ride was Haystack Rock. John took Tate around while I stayed with Blake since he was asleep. If you look closely you can see all the puffins flying around the top of

the rock.

I wanted to keep going because the last time John and I were here, there were some really cool tide pools all the way down the beach at some other rocks. We rode all the way down there to find the tide not out far enough, so all the tide pools were covered with water. Bummer. We still stopped and walked around, but that led to Tate falling and getting wet, having a massive breakdown, and crying the whole way back. Not exactly how I pictured that going.

Back at our beach enjoying the fresh air and great view.

Lunch on the beach-"sand" whiches.

It was great getting to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa Krohn. Tate would not leave Grandma's side. He wanted her to go everywhere with him. "Grandma come here, over here, Grandma." over and over Tate would say.
Telling Grandma all about the kite that Uncle Kris was flying in the background.Running so the waves wouldn't catch him.

Brothers reunited. Uncle Mike and Cousin Brynn were a favorite to hang out with.

This was Tate on our first day after we got back from the beach. He was covered in sand. I thought when we headed down to the beach we were going just to kinda check things out. Not to get really dirty-I would have come more prepared. Oh well, we had a big tub to scrub the Tate monster.

John had a great time with his family playing a 'friendly' softball game.

Another day we decided to take the short drive up to Ecola State Park. There were great views (would have been even better if it wasn't so overcast), and we even hiked. None of us had been there before, and I read about it online and thought we could manage the hike. When we got there, one of the hikes was a couple miles and we decided to not torture the parents by dragging all the kids along on that. So we opted for the short hike to the lookout. I felt like we were off roading it-Blake got a bumpy ride and Tate's legs apparently were broken so he couldn't walk.

The view. Worth it.
I had no idea surfing really existed in Oregon, but this was the beach for it. There were tons of people out there surfing right behind us in this picture.
Totally worth that smile.

6 months vs. 4 months

Blake vs. Livia

Cute no matter what size they are!

(Sorry Blake about the socks again)

Mike vs. John

"Silly Mike" according to Tate vs. "Mean Daddy" according to Tate.

Another great thing about the Bull Gull was the fountain area and BBQ was the perfect place for a family dinner. Blake enjoyed his meal . . .

and Tate wanted John's nose for dinner. Doesn't seem like John is so excited about that prospect.The best part about this vacation was Cannon Beach is where the Krohn's went on family vacations growing up. It was really neat to be about to go back to the same place together and have all of our kids with us. I can see why they made this place a traditional vacation spot. I would love to bring our family back each year, it was that much fun.