After spending 3 days in San Diego, our family drove up to Newport Beach to spend June 25th-July 2nd with my whole family! In the past, we've rented an upper and lower unit of a beach house, but this year, we rented one and a half beach houses so we could fit all 28 of us! We've become quite a crowd since we went to Newport 2 years ago. Between the 5 of us with cameras, we ended up with over 1200 pictures, so I've included a few of my favorites here...
I adore Newport Beach! It's just the perfect vacation for a big family because we can all be together, relax and not really have to go anywhere. I took the series of pictures (above) to capture everyone's excitement about being there!
Including our kids, there are 14 kids now and Natalie was over 7 months pregnant while we were in Newport, so there are plenty of cousins to play with. I'm always amazed how long we can all be content playing in the sand! We dug pits, made kids into sand mermaids, made sand castles, Lightening McQueen and a giraffe in the sand...
When we're not playing in the sand, the ocean is always a nice break. I love boogie boarding and so do Ashlyn and Dan. There were days that Ashlyn was in the ocean (which was only about 65 degrees!) for 3 to 4 hours at a time! She's such a fish. Corey and Claire are content to get in up to their waist and that's about it!
On Sunday, we went to church across the street from the Newport Beach Temple, then went to take family pictures by the temple...
Early in the week, we saw a group of dolphins swimming not far off shore. Throughout the week, we saw several sets of dolphins and took a few pictures. It was amazing to see them swimming so close to us...
Another favorite activity for the kids is collecting sand crabs. They always seemed to have a bucket full of them. Claire loves anything creepy and crawly, so she was just in heaven!
One of my favorite traditions at Newport is biking down to the Pier for fresh, hot doughnuts. It is literally, the only time I ever eat doughnuts, but it's worth it to take a little more insulin for these!
Another tradition is taking family pictures on the beach at sunset near the end of the week. Unfortunately, we have to rely on some random stranger at the beach to take our big group picture (of 28 of us)! We do slightly better taking our own pictures of each family separately...
I love this vacation because we "eat when we're hungry and sleep when we're tired." I seriously didn't want the week to end! I was so good to be with my whole family, to get to know baby Luke and Izzy better and to enjoy relaxing on the beach.
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