The Randalls: Another Summer Vacation

I love the summer and all the fun things we do as a family. It’s become a tradition to meet my brother and his family in Mesquite. I’m so glad we make the effort each year to try and see each other. I have the best memories of seeing my cousins multiple times a year and we still have that special cousin bond. I want the same thing for my kids. Since we live in Utah with so many of the Randall-side cousins I have no doubt their bond will stick. It’s a little more work for the Woolley side, but Darron and I do the best we can.
Unfortunately, this year our get-together was missing VaLynn, Grant and Mark (who was in China, of course).
The minute we got Nonna and Papa’s house the kids were already getting in their swimsuits. I just realized that seeing this picture of Piper in her life jacket reminded me that this was the last day she wore it. At the end of this vacation we took the life jacket off to see what she could do. She can totally swim without it with no problems. She was one happy girl.

Cannon ball jumping is all the rage with these cousins.

This is what the adults do until it gets too hot to sit, even in the shade, and you have to get in the pool.

The second day we went to the Tuacahn Amphitheater in St. George to see The Wizard of Oz. We stopped at Costa Vida for dinner. Calista wanted a picture with mommy. I couldn’t say no.

I actually got all the kids to sit still for two seconds to take this awesome picture.

I didn’t even tell them where to sit. They all sat with the Woolley’s on one side and Randall’s on the other and even in age order going down the steps. I’m wondering if Téa had anything to do with that setup.
All the crazies!

We sat around eating (again) waiting for it to get dark for the performance to start. I was blown away at how much Isaac had grown in one year since we last saw him. He is about a head taller than Téa and they are only 7 months apart. We are still waiting for Téa to hit her growth spurt.

Anna wouldn’t look at me. She was enjoying her frozen lemonade too much.

Calista and Alex sharing some frozen lemonade. Two peas in a pod, these two.

And us older folk.

Little miss Pipsqueak. She couldn’t wait for the show to start. I thought she was going to jump out of her skin.

The performance was amazing, as usual. The script was almost word-for-word from the movie at some points. It made me realize just how much I have memorized from my kids watching it a thousand times over the years.
Over the next few days the kids made a TON of things with the rainbow looms my mom had on hand. It helped keep them busy during quiet time. The quiet time wasn’t necessarily for the kids either. All the parents needed a little down time from being out in the sun and in the pool.

My kind of quiet time included some guitar jamming sessions with Darron. I let Dad borrow my guitar so he could brush up on his guitar skills that haven’t been put to use in ages.

The kids were getting a little water logged so we decided to find something else for them to do. Since this is the average temperature in the middle of the day…

…anything outside besides swimming is out of the question. We took the kids to see How to Train your Dragon 2 at the movies. They loved it, I loved the air conditioned theater and we all loved that we got the entire theater to ourselves so we could be as loud and obnoxious as we wanted.
As soon as we got back from the movies can you guess what the kids wanted to do next?

Yup. More swimming.
Darron and I played tennis one morning. Darron played well, but I still beat him so he decided to teach me pickle ball so he could beat me at something. I held my own, but in the end he still whooped me. We had so much fun we went again the next morning and took Isaac and Téa and Ross with us.

Since we play at the Sun City rec center there are always lots of people around playing all the different sports. Apparently, we were playing pickle ball so wrong that these two women jumped in to correct our playing. Darron plays a lot in Washington with the young men so I guess he was taught a few of the wrong rules. Once we got the hang of it, we had a blast.
Our last day together included a BBQ for dinner and eating outside. The kids just didn’t want to get out of the pool for long to eat so we compromised.