Grosse Family Vaca 2017

The annual Grosse family vacation was to Galveston beach this year. We stayed in a nice beach house right on the water and had a blast. Cambry and Lainey loved the beach and had no fear of the water. They wore puddle jumpers most of the time because the waves were pretty rough. They enjoyed building sandcastles and Cambry loved hunting for shells.

Colton, on the other hand, did not enjoy the beach. That is, until THE VERY LAST DAY. We joked the whole time how he was not cut out for beach life. He was cut out for beach resort life. He did not want to get in the sand, he just wanted to lounge, be held, or go to sleep. He would continually run back toward the beach house. Then for some reason on the 6th day he decided to just start playing in the sand and walking along the shore!

We celebrated several birthdays at the beach. Ashley's, Cody's, and Greg's birthdays all fall within a week of each other in June. Mom made a cake and put up decorations to celebrate these 3.

Then another day we celebrated Kyler's early birthday with another cake. You can never have too many cakes on vacation.

Obviously we had to continue the tradition of jumping photos. I think the guys nailed it.

This is what happened when we attempted to take a group cousin photo. This is literally the best we could get. But kinda perfect. It pretty much summarizes the chaos of this stage.

Lauren bought these hats for the girls when we visited them in Phoenix and I just think they are the cutest things ever when they wear them. 

We always end up with a couple beach nappers. And they are usually our kids.

We were all keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Cindy which was threatening the gulf coast while we were there. Thankfully it didn't come near us and we only ended up with about a day of rain. It was pretty amazing how the tide came all the way up to the grass. With gray sky all around and absolutely no beach one day, we built an awesome sand castle on our pathway. My dad has always been a great, and serious, sandcastle builder. I have inherited that gene as well. I love building castles and making them very neat and pretty. I don't really like it when little hands try to "help" on my section of the castle, haha. "Let's everyone work on our own separate parts, mkay??"

We took all the kids to the Galveston Children's museum one day and they had so much fun. It was a great museum with lots of rooms and so many things for the kids to do. Then we stopped at restaurant for a seafood lunch. That was really our only "outing". All the other days we just enjoyed the beach...sometimes twice a day. Some afternoons we had relaxing time and introduced the kids to Moana and Trolls.

I'm so thankful for the quality family time we had together. The cousins had a blast playing together and having bunk bed slumber parties (for the 4 big kids) every night. The adults had several game nights after the kids went to bed. One of our favorite family games to play on vacation is Pictionary. My mom always brings a big easel and drawing pad and we just crack up at everyone's drawings. It's always sad to leave the beach after such good family time. Thanks Gigi and Pa for a great vacation!