Family Vacation.....FINALLY!

So you may remember a while back (okay back at the end of July, personal stuff gets pushed aside) that I was in Oregon with my family for vacation. My grandma Shirley lives in Pheonix year round, however the past five years she has been spending the summers in a little town on the coast of Oregon called Brookings. This year we all made it out there to visit and I LOVED IT!!!!! (well most of the immediate family plus family friends) This side of the family includes my dad, stepmom, her mom...aka grandma Shirley, my brother Chris (step if you wanna be technical) and his family, my brother Kevin and his wife (again step, but we just don't keep track of that) and finally my dad's best friends Pat and Bern.
The temperature on the coast up there is about 20 degrees cooler than if you are inland. Plus as you will see in the slide show, IT'S JUST BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!

What did we do while on vacationing there....I thought you'd never ask. We (Dad, Pat, Bern, Andy and I) actually flew into Medford Oregon and then made the 3 hour drive to Brookings. Andy and I decided the first evening to walk down to the beach and take some pictures and enjoy the sunset. I have to be honest that it was driving me CRAZY not being able to photograph a couple while in this gorgeous setting at such a beautiful time of day. So to my surprise Andy amused me and let me set up the camera on timer for a few "couple" shots. I'm so glad he did!!! I can't wait to make a canvas wrap of one of those for our house. :)
The next morning we got up and headed to a kite festival they have in town. That night more family rolled in. The next two mornings we got up early and we hunting for clams and found lots of starfish. It was really fun, even if we weren't very good at it. We did find a few and grilled them up...YUM! (the clams....not the starfish) In the evenings the boys fished right off the beach and caught a few. We visited a brandy distillery on my birthday and went on a jet boat river ride the next day. The last full day we were there we went to two different redwood forests. O M GOODNESS....I have never felt so small but at the same time so peaceful and safe. When I look at the pictures...I'm still amazed by their strength. Some of these trees have been around for 2-3,000 years!!!! Well here is a slideshow I made from our two cameras plus 3 point and shoots from my family. WARNING....my family (and myself) are pretty goofy, so feel free to laugh at some of these pictures. The picture at the end is one I did of my grandma out on the porch. Isn't she BEAUTIFUL! She'll be 86 this year and still gets up and goes. THANK YOU GRANDMA for taking such great care of us while we were out visiting you! WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!!