One Day in Oregon

Less than a week after arriving at our new house in California we headed north to Oregon for a very quick trip to visit family and attend some family events.  John (3) asked if we were going to move to another new house.  I tried to explain we were going for a few days to visit and would then come back to this house.   Poor John.   Here we are heading to Oregon...the drive is about 11 hours with no stops.  We had to stop several times and it took us about 13 hours.  Within a few miles of crossing the border into Oregon it started raining.  :)  The kids watched movies in the car on the way.  They were pretty good travelers.

We arrived at Scott's parent's house in Oregon late Friday night.  We were all excited to see everyone.  Here are Emma and Anna with cousins Karlee and Kelsie.

All the present and awake Guptill side cousins.

The next day we went to Karlee's baptism.

This picture has a chain of cousins.  The four Kenner kids plus a couple of their cousins on the Kenner side (I think, right?), a couple cousins on the Guptill side (John and Anna) and one of Anna and John's cousins on the Keeler side (Magnus).  So it was cousins of cousins of cousins...or something like that.   

Magnus and Gideon (but mostly Magnus) had so much fun playing with all the kids.  Grant always tells us how Magnus is his "best friend."  When Anna and Grant saw Magnus coming one of them shouted, "This is the best family reunion ever!"  Cousins of cousins...

And here is Great Grandma Guptill (we celebrated her 90th birthday that weekend) with all the H. Scott Guptill grandkids except for Lulu and Owen who weren't there.  You can spot newest baby  Norah (Scott's sister Alycia's 3rd) in a car seat possibly asleep and new baby Benjamin (first child of Scott's youngest sibling, John) in Jaron's arms.  And the next newest, our Emma, crying there in purple.

Scott and siblings (and spouses) with Grandma

I'm in there somewhere.

And speaking of cousins, here are my three boys plus their cousin Magnus, with Scott's cousin's boys. Boys united by a mobile device of some kind.  :)  They had fun doing whatever that was.  Cousins and more cousins!

And two more cousins (Kelsie and Anna) come to photobomb.  The boys were unfazed.

Later on...

Karlee and Anna (they are four or so months apart) playing their tiny guitars/ukeleles.  Anna calls Karlee her "twin cousin." I think more because they are a few months apart than that they look alike.  They kind of look alike.  They had so much fun together.

Later on we went to Scott's dad's retirement party.    He is not quite retired yet, but will be in a month or so.  Everyone had fun at the party and we got to hear lots of great stories about Papa Guptill.  And see some good pictures of all his endeavors!    A lot of kind words about him and a nice event!

Emma smooshing her face on the glass at the party.

I snapped a picture or two before running in to stop her from doing this.

It surprised me a little that Matthew (age 9) was so interested in the babies.  

Here he is holding Norah (7 weeks old).

Uh oh!  She still looks so cute even when she is sad.

And baby Benjamin.  He's 7 1/2 months or so old.

He was a pretty happy baby and didn't mind all us strangers holding him.  I think he is a Benjamin Scott(?) and Matthew is a Matthew Scott.  So look, they already have something to talk about.  They have the same middle name.  :) 

Here are the Guptill siblings.  Not often all together so we must document it!

Right to left (oldest to youngest): Serena, Angie, Scott, Alycia and John.

And before we knew it, it was time to go.  Emma was nervous a lot of the weekend.  There have been lots of big changes for her lately, so considering that I thought she did pretty well.

She even agreed as how she would hug a few people when we left.  Goodbye family and goodbye Oregon.  :(  We headed back south Sunday morning.  It would have been fun to stay longer but Scott had to be back to work on Monday.

When we crossed into California it stopped raining.  :)  Don't know why it was so rainy that weekend.  On the way north we couldn't see the top of Shasta - it was too cloudy.  So I had to get a picture on the way back.  It's much more impressive in person.

The kids survived.  Matthew and Anna especially didn't want to leave and may have tried to hide so they could get accidentally left behind.  Cousin time is so precious.  Must plan/arrange more of it!  It was too bad it was so short this time, but we did pack a lot of fun into one day.

Beach Break

In between unpacking boxes we took a break and went to the beach.  This was on the 4th of July (second day in our house) so lots of other people were at the beach too.  We went to Palm Beach in Watsonville.  For that beach it was a bit crowded but for, say, a Rhode Island beach on a summer holiday it was practically empty.  :)  At our house it was sunny and hot but overcast and a little chilly at the beach.  Typical marine layer action.  :)  We didn't even wear swimsuits or bring towels (I don't know where all the towels are currently) but we still had fun and got plenty wet and sandy.  Here we are on top of a dune heading down toward the water.

Despite the chilly breeze Matthew, Anna and Grant waded (or more) in the water and had a great time.

Matthew was pretty cold at first but eventually got used to the water and had fun.

Grant got very wet.  I think he fell down in the water at one point.

Scott held Emma who was too cold to be interested in exploring.  She was nervous about the sand too.  Kinda like Grant used to be.

Cold Emma and John.  At one point John headed down toward the water with me.  He almost touched the water but had a change of heart at the last minute and came back to huddle in my sweatshirt.

He peaked his head out once in a while.

Toward the end he wanted to look around for rocks to throw in the water.  We couldn't find any rocks but found a sand dollar instead.  He was unimpressed with the sand dollar and immediately threw it in the water.  :(

Here's Grant after falling down and getting very wet.

The kids didn't want to leave and asked if we could go back again the next day.

The Move to End All Moves

We started this move over a year ago.  Scott got out of the Air Force.  We moved out of our house in Illinois and Scott started his job in California.  We had trouble finding a house and ended up having one built.   And due to various factors, getting from one end of that process to the other took a long time.  But now the house is done.  The time has come to move in!  It took some time to pack up our things in Utah, and I'm sure my parents will be finding stowaway cars or forgotten Legos for a while. Before we left Utah we said goodbye to Grant-pa Reeve (my grandfather).  

My parents generously offered to drive our stuff in their van from Utah to California with us.  

We just barely got it all in there.

And the van, heavy laden with all our stuff, made it over Donner Summit!

Here was our route.

Goodbye Salt Lake.

And Hello California (see how I skipped over Nevada there?)

The kids traveled amazingly well.  They hardly said a word or asked for any snacks the whole time.  With the exception of Emma, who fussed and cried a lot on the trip.  She had THE WORST bed hair (or road trip hair?) situation I've ever seen (after 9 or so hours in the car).  I think she got some gummy worm in there somehow.  It took lots of baby wipes and elbow grease to tame her gummy worm/road trip hair do.  Here she is at Chick-Fil-A in Vacaville, CA with her amazing hair.  Scott's college and Air Force buddy runs the Chick-Fil-A in Vacaville Commons, so we try to patronize his place when we can.  It's a pretty nice Chick-Fil-A.

And on that last stretch...

We got to our house about 8pm.    It was still light and the kids were able to take in the new house in some daylight.  They were all very excited.  It was hard to get everyone to go to sleep that night.

I felt pretty overwhelmed when I saw all the boxes.  I mean we have done this so many times with the Air Force so I don't know why it seemed so daunting, but we've got a lot of unpacking to do.  We took some breaks to ride around the neighborhood a bit.  Matthew and Anna especially were so excited to be reunited with their bikes!  We have yet to locate the bike pump unfortunately.  We'll find it soon.  Emma loved all the bikes too.

Scott and my dad went to work straight away and ended up installing six (yes, SIX!!!) ceiling fans in one day, plus changing out an electrical outlet to be compatible with our fridge.  It was quite a feat!  The fans look great!  And thanks to them we were able to have refrigeration!!

Matthew rode his bike around a lot and got sweaty helmet head from it.  It was warm, but it gets cool at night, much to the kid's surprise.  I need to remember to bring sweatshirts with us wherever we go. They grow a lot of garlic in our town and when it gets harvested (now) and other times too you can smell the garlic in the air.  We knew all about this phenomenon before choosing to buy here.  I actually like the garlic smell.  We also get nice ocean breezes through the pass.  We live about 20 miles from the beach but it takes a little longer to get there because of the Santa Cruz mountains right in between.  But I love that we get the coastal coolness in the evening.

And here we are in front of our new house!  There are lots of kids living in the development and everyone is very friendly.   I think the kids are enjoying the new house...and enjoying being reunited with their old toys.  It's like Christmas.  My mom stopped at one of the farm stands nearby and brought us some strawberries straight from the field...plus oranges, artichokes etc.  Lots of local deliciousness.  I love the amazing local produce!

So we survived the move and and are still working on the unpacking.

This was our last move affiliated with the Air Force in any way.  The Air Force moved us one last time.  We decided where to move and now we can decide how long we stay and where we go next.  For now Scott is enjoying his job.  He's got a lot of responsibility at work and they keep him pretty busy, but things are going well for him.

And thus begins our new California adventure...

Em-mazing!

Emma didn't like having her picture taken when we did family pictures in December.  And, unlike the other kids, she didn't have any school or sports pictures this year.  So I had been wanting to take her back to get pictures of just her before we moved away from Utah.  Photo sessions in Utah are a pretty good deal from what I've seen in other parts of the country.  So I wanted to take advantage of that before we moved to a more expensive area.  Unfortunately Emma, who is now almost 20 months, is deep into the separation anxiety phase.  If you meet her, don't take offense if she is stand offish or flat out cries if you approach her.  It's just the age...and being in the nursery has made her extra nervous.  And I'm sure moving will make things worse for a while.  We'll see.  So when she entered the studio for pictures, she immediately started crying.  It is nothing short of a miracle that there are so many passable pictures from this photo shoot.   Our photographer was amazing!  Here are some of my favorite Emma pics.

So most of the time, things were going about like this.  Poor Emma.

But there were some good moments and the photographer was quick to capture them.

Emma even warmed up a little at the end and did some marching.

I'm glad we were able to get some good photos.

She won't stay this small forever.  And its nice to have some quality pics to remember.