Bushes By The Beach: Day One

Oh blogging!  How I've missed you!  I have a huge long list of events to catch up on, so prepare to be inundated.  Let's start with our Bush Family Reunion which was Wednesday, May 8 - Sunday, May 12 in Ventura, California.  

Only 5 out of the 8 of us kids were able to make it as Gabe and Ellen are in Jordan, Chelsea and Dixon are in Singapore, and Tasha is in Florida on her mission.  We missed them!

A few years ago my family decided that we were outgrowing my parents house and getting everyone together for the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays was becoming increasingly difficult.  We decided that whoever could come home on holidays still would, but that every other summer we would plan an official reunion somewhere besides Logan so that it could be more of a vacation and less of a "everyone show up and crash Mom and Dads house in a whirlwind of mass chaos". :)  We decided that each sibling should have a turn planning the reunion and so the inaugural reunion was headed up by Amy and Karl who decided on Yellowstone and rented a cabin at Island Park in June 2011.  As Daphne was born just a few days before the reunion began, we were unable to attend, so I was especially looking forward to this year!

Surf pro Eli with the beach house in the background (you probably can't see it, but ours was the one with the white porch on the second level and the blue trim around the roof)

As Elijah and Marinda may have a chance to live overseas again in the next few years, they decided they had better skip April (who was next in line to plan) and take their turn now while they were on the West Coast.  Marinda found an AMAZING beach house for us all to pitch in and rent in Ventura and it turned out to be an absolutely perfect setup.  With 10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, 2 huge kitchens, 5 sitting room areas (3 upstairs, 2 downstairs), 2 hot tubs (one on the upstairs patio deck and one downstairs), a huge sandbox area  and not to  mention the beach literally right behind the seawall, there was plenty of room for each family to feel like they had their own space and for kids to play and run wild without driving everyone batty.  

As you can see, the hot tubs were a huge hit.  The kids could have played in them ALL day long.

Almost as soon as we arrived, the Twins found each other and were in absolute toddler heaven playing in the sandbox together.

And we were in absolute heaven watching our sweet nieces and nephews being overjoyed to see each other.

The theme they chose this year was "Bushes by the Beach" with the logo BBB13 which has duel meaning as BBB also stands for our family motto of "Bushes Be Your Best".  When we first got there, we played around for a few hours, had a luau dinner with dessert to celebrate Devon's birthday, followed by a welcome ceremony with cheers to introduce each family and a little rule setting before bed.  

The Kirby Family doing a sweet Hawaiian rowing chant to introduce their clan.  We were so lame.  All we said was, "A is for Adams, that's good enough for us - hey!" (to the tune of Cookie Monster singing "C is for Cookie")

I loved that Elijah had a conch to blow whenever he wanted to summon us (a sore temptation for all little boys).

Absolutely love beautiful Marinda's facial expression in this picture

I think my favorite part of that first day was looking outside after dinner to see Burke surrounded by an army of blue-clad nephews, directing traffic and getting down on his hands and knees in the sand to create a massive sandcastle.  So in love with this good man who is such a great uncle!   

It was a great start to an even greater week.