penner family reuion 2008

every other year we get together for my family's reuion. just my parents, brothers and sister and their families get together. this year we went down to my brother kevin's house in san deigo ca. cory had to work so the kids, my parents, and i all drove down in my car. we just bought a mazada cx-9 in october. our volkswagon had seen better days. we went down the end of november for thanksgiving. we all camped at a KOA campground about 1/2 hour away from kevin's house. i was the only one sleeping in a tent. everyone else had cabin's they rented. too spendy for us. :) the kids loved to sleep in a tent though. i didn't get hardly any sleep. but it was still a good time had by all. we had thanksgiving dinner ata church by kevin's house. my sister cherie and i had all the kids at the church and played games and did activities with them all day while everyone else cooked. it was a lot of fun. then we had dinner at the church.

after dinner we had a play done by all the little kids. it was very cute


we decided to make a trip to old town san deigo. we walked around looking at a musuem and then we walked around the square. after that we went to get some lunch at a really good resturant we always stop at.

while we were out we went to a park. it was a reallllly big park. it was really neat. there was a lot to do there. we walked for awhile and we took a picture on this dragon thing we found there..

after that it was the best of times...it was the worst of times... that's all i can say. lol we didn't really have a plan so it was kinda spur of the moment we decided to go take a tour on a bus that ended up not being a tour at all. we waited alomst a 1/2 hour for a bus that could fit us all on. when we finally got on...well.. camille's face says it all in this picture. we got off soon thereafter. then we went to a playground and went back to the campground.

so meanwhile.... back at the campground... :) hanging out at the campground was great. the kids got to run around on the grass and go in each other's cabins. it was a lot of fun. but it rained a lot of the time we were there. one day cherie, ken, todd, and kevin decided to rent bikes for everyone to have a ride on. they took rides all around the camp. lex and elaina loved it.

one of the days we were there we went to the beach. this is what i was looking forward to all weekend. since going to florida i was missing the beach a lot. but the beach in florida and the beach in san deigo in november is night and day. lol my kids were very excited about going to the beach again...but they were thinking it was florida beach. everyday before we got to the beach lex would ask when we were going. so when we finally got there he was very excited. he walked out to the water and put his feet in. he was like...."COLD!!!!!" but he still wanted to go swimming. well i wasn't about to get into the water. and elaina wasn't having all of it either. so uncle kevin took him out.

i would say within 5 mins lex was crying. :( he was really cold and a wave went over his head. after that my kids were done being in the water. lol so we took tot he beach instead. elaina was much happier there playing in the sand. so i figured if we were goign to be there for awhile i would build a sand castle. all the kids would come over and ask.."can we knock it down????!!!!" the saying for that day was.... "not until i get a freakin picture!!" sooo..they waited...the little vulchers. just hovering until i was done....

i didn't get a picture of the final desent upon my beauitful castle. it's just better not to see such things.

back at the campground.... we had a great time here's some pictures of us hanging out. most of the time we hung out i never had my camera with me. :( so no movie night pictures...no dinner pictures.... no sitting by the fire talking pictures. none of that. :(

lex had begged me to take him to the big playground by the entrance to the KOA campground. so i finally did it the day before we went home. that's the day that todd and kirsten's baby nate was blessed and also bradon was baptized. i didn't bring my camera so i didn't get any of those pictures either. :( or...maybe it was on saturday night... i can't remember now :( anyways i missed the pictures. but here's the playground.. :)

lex was so scared to go down this slide. so cousin jordan took him downt eh first time. and this is him going down by himself. he was so proud of himself and so was i. :) lex is more cautious about things like that. elaina just goes for it...so was on her way up by herself but i told her she was little bit too young for that still.

this was elaina's first time swinging by herself in a big swing. she was so excited. i took this picture and turned away to see what lex was doing and elaina started screaming. she fell off face first into the sand. it was so sad.

well guess what i found??? picture of a campfire! this was our last night together so i took some pictures.

well it was time to go home. and for me i was really glad. this trip was a hard one for me to go on. i just wanted to be home. i missed cory and i was having just a hard time throughout the trip. so here's my mom packed away with the kids in the back of the car. we were PACKED!! we couldn't fit anything else even if we wanted to.