Catching up! Family Reunion in July

Alright, here comes more back-blogging :)

July was a super fun filled month! We went down to Oregon to celebrate with Corvallis friends and family Bobby and Jessica's wedding. My entire side of the family was able to come, so it qualified as a "Rampton Family Reunion" too! Bobby and Jessica are so happy and cute together. I'm so happy that Bobby found such a terrific companion.




Selfishly I'm really happy that he found such an awesome sister in law to join the family. She and I went running together and had some really nice girl talks. She is perfect for Bobby- smart, beautiful, funny, and she gets his teasing and off the wall sense of humor which is important :)

We had such a great weekend. Started out with a family swim at Corvallis' very own water park.

Sister Meta and her family

We had family pictures the next day. I think the last time we had family pictures was three years ago and there were at least half the number of individuals in our family back then so this was an important thing to do. Here are some of the families (for some reason, I don't have one of Meta's clan):


Brother Marcus and his family


Sister Lisa and her family



Sister Anna and her family


Mother and Father


Our family


My darling niece Abigail who just got baptized


Rob and I

After family pictures, we headed downtown for some delicious American Dream Pizza and took a walk along the river front.




Kids enjoying watching the skaters at the skateboard park

The morning of the reception, we all went down to DaVinci Days to enjoy Corvallis culture. I really love DaVinci Days :)





The cousins all got along so well. I think seeing all of them play together and build memories at my parent's home is really important to my siblings and I.



Jasper still asks about his "big boy" cousins at least once a day (Meta's Nathaniel, Marcus' Jack, and Anna's Jimmy). It's kind of funny because he has four cousins that are his age...


...but for some reason he's completely enamored with the ones that are older than him. The cousins spent alot of time running around outside together. It's such a nice feeling to let my kids go run around outside and not worry about them getting run over or kidnapped.













Bobby and Jessica's reception was really nice. Lots of family friends came to wish them luck and congratulate them. Jessica's sweet, sweet family was able to come out too. They are so terrific. She has these two adorable little sisters who had stars in their eyes as they watched their big sister in her wedding gown. It was really nice to get to know them all better.

By Monday, alot of people had taken off- Lisa and Taylor, Meta and Todd, and Marcus and Becca. The rest of us went to Newport for the day. Ate at Mo's:






The taffy boat!

We spent a terrific afternoon at the beach too-









My sister Anna decided to stay the following week so the boys and I stayed a few days more so that we could have a little more cousin and sister bonding time. Anna and I had such a great time together. I wish I lived closer to one of my sisters... It's so nice to have that laid back feeling with sister. We spent most of the week talking and taking our kids on little outings.









It was such a nice little vacation and I loved spending time with my family. The one thing that makes me sad after looking through all these pictures is the realization that we were not able to make it out to Utah this summer to visit Rob's family. We've gone every summer since being married and we always have such a great time with the Egberts. Rob has been really, really busy this summer. He felt like he couldn't take any more time away from his research, plus we are trying to save money. Jasper keeps asking about his Utah cousins and Larry and Glenda, which makes me wish we could have made it work. I think we will try and go out for New Years.