Gualala Anticipation

I love that our whole family gets so giddy about Gualala. It is so much fun to anticipate. Thankfully, i am not stressed a bit about getting ready for the trip. I am always just so giddy. It is like butterflies in your tummy all the time. We talk about all we are going to do there at dinner every night for two weeks leading up to it, it seams. Brooke shares all her fun memories and we talk about all the friends she will get to play with there. Gualala is just part of who i am. It is such a huge part of where i learned important things in life, like HARD WORK (jessica, kim and I have lots of fun memories scrubbing huge stainless steal pots in the spicket by the road)and how to have fun, and bonding times with family. Some of my earliest memories are roasting marshmallows around the fire gate Grandma Smith had with Heidi and Micah, and often times waking up with marshmallows stuck in our hair. Or playing cards in Aunt Holly's motorhome, finding banana slugs in the fern forest, collecting crabs at point arena and getting "lost" from the campsite, but always finding our way back to the christmas lights Grandma Smith made sure to hang at her site, just for that reason. Or earning money picking up trash just so we could buy more candy from Grandma Smith's store. Man, the list goes on for miles and miles.

But i just wanted to write down and remember the giddyness that fills our home for the weeks leading up to this awesome weekend! I also love it so much because it makes me think about Grandma all the time and all the memories that are woven into my heart because of her diligence in making this a family tradition. For some reason i feel her presence and love just a bit more about this time of year.

Our family is so blessed because of this fun tradition. Its going to be another fun memorial weekend! Cold, but always fun!

Memorial Day Weekend

I am not the best at painting pictures with words. I used to think I was good at it when I was in college...I was an english major-and I had to write a lot of papers. Although, I wouldn't even believe it when I go back and read some of the things I write. But hey, this journal isn't being graded! (Or edited and rewritten three times).
But someday i hope to capture in words and pictures what Memorial Day Weekend at Gualala means to me. But until then-the list of the fun will have to do!
-5 hours on the rock beach at the river on Saturday enjoying a beautiful day (and it was even more sweet because the forecast said rain and cold all weekend.) watching Brooke jump off the log again this year-that alone brought back so many memories as a kid playing on that log, getting the courage up to jump into the FREEZING cold water.
-watching livy get pulled around the river by emma in a little raft boat.
-floating down the river from the infamous loggers bridge (that is where we used to go dirt biking!) on our slow leaking queen air bed with Brooke and Livy. It was cold (monday), but livy and brooke loved it-except for the black spiders brooke and I kept finding on our legs. A few years ago ben and I floated down the river on an double high air mattress that my parents were going to throw away because it had a slow leak-it was so awesome because we never had to walk once. Now we do it every year!
-pushing kids on the swings for HOURS. literally Hours. But it is great because you can just chat with everyone at the playground, or spend good quality time with your kids!
-McCoy stories at the campfire
-Abolone feed
-starring into the sky and trying to comprehend how amazingly tall all the redwood trees are.
-ewok village
-seeing brooke and her friends play on the same log we spent hours on as kids with Micah and Heidi and Jessica
-hearing the excitement from Brooke about buying things at the snack shack. I loved that too as a kid.
-Celebrating ben's birthday with a pinata in the redwoods. That is a fun tradition-more for the kids-but a fun tradition.
Riding bikes on teh uneven pavement around and around the entire campground.
-the best food ever!
-soaking in the beauty from the beach, the river, the campsites, the trees, the green foilage! Everything.
-watching the guys clean abolone in their garbage bags.
-sunday night fireside around the campfire.

Things I missed this year
-going to point arena and out on the boat
-grandma smith's christmas lights in campsite 208 and 208A. (Man, I miss her so much.)
-going off the rope swing half-way down the river
-a few campfires (it seemed every night at least one kid ended pu crying after we put them down and we had to go to the tent early.But we still got some good stories and fun memories in.)
-the teeter-totter in front of the bathrooms (wish they would put that back)
-biking into town and going to the cutest little grocery store.
-sacrament in the beautiful grove next to the river. Feeling the spirit bear witness to you while you soaked in the beauty of God's creations in a majestical setting (Jackson was starting to get sick and he fell asleep right before we left for church, so I hung back with him in the tent. But I really missed that part.)

Thank you Grandma Smith for starting this Tradition and Making it such a priority for our family to be there every Memorial Day Weekend. And thanks mom for keeping up the tradition and getting our family organized and there every year. "Traditions are the glue that sticks a family together" -

and someday, hopefully soon, I will post pictures with it too.