{ Starbuck Family Reunion in Texas }

We usually switch off years for our big family reunions-and this year was the Starbuck Family Reunion Beach Version. Our kids loves the beach. We only live about 3+ hours from the Gulf of Mexico on the Florida side, but we usually still only manage to get there about once a year. They are getting old enough now that they all (except for our littlest guy Ethan) really enjoy being out in the waves (not a lot of wave fear here) and playing the the sand. When we told the kids our plan of renting a beach house for the week on the Texas side of the Gulf coast near Aaron’s sister Joanna's family-the countdown officially began. Scott and Ryan would make daily inquires of how many more days until the beach.

We left the weekend of the 4th and headed down in our TWO vehicles to the reunion. Yep, two vehicles still. I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger on getting one of those really big 15 passenger vans yet. And renting one with this many miles to travel doesn’t turn out to be really that budget friendly-so two vehicles it is. The kids love getting to spread out a little more, and Aaron and I love to play the car-switcharoony-game when things in our own vehicles are getting a little too loud.

For the first leg of our trip we headed down through Baton Rouge and stayed the night so we could attend church the next day and walk around the temple grounds.

   

It’s always fun to go and see the beautiful temples across the country, and it became the perfect backdrop for our monthly family testimony meeting after church. Ryan’s was sporting his awesome my-mom-forgot-to-pack-my-church-pants-outfit-with the all inclusive socks and shoes to go with it. We tried to convince him that just wearing the shoes without the socks would be so cool looking. He threw a fit until the socks (which were pulled up all the way just minutes before this picture) were included in his little ensemble.

  

This is his “cool” pose he told us. Watch out man models-this guy’s on fire!

..And a little modeling for our littlest little Starbuck in the hotel room. We all keep trying the repeat daily to him-“Don’t grow up!”, but alas he just keeps getting bigger and bigger-and cuter and cuter in our opinion. Ethan is four months old now, and the kids love that they can get him to giggle and smile all time. Erika and Abby made a video here in the hotel of him laughing. Erika would hide under the blanket and say “Ethan…Ethan…this is your conscience…” and then she would pop and out and say, “No, it’s just your sister Erika!” and they would both giggle.

One more day of driving and we were at the beach along the Galveston peninsula in a little town called Surfside Beach. Our beach house backed up to the beach with a little walkway that headed right down there. We had so many people that we needed to rent two houses just to fit us all. This is the first time that everyone (all except one brother-in-law who is deployed) was there. That hasn’t happened in forever. It was a lot of fun to have even the grandparents who took a little break from their mission to help Aaron’s sister Cathy with her six kids since her husband was in Kuwait, there.

  

Scott and cousin Jared with their arsenal of water weapons for the water gun capture the flag game one night.

After the first day with only two boogie boards, Grandma and Granddad took a trip into town and found a bunch of little boards for the kids.The kids were so excited and all started grabbing boards and screaming with excitement, until they realized that there were only so many boards, and many more children, and also not enough “boy boards” for all those super-insistent boys. Granddad lovingly gathered back up the boards and had a little pow-wow with the kids.

I love how patient this man is-definitely a virtue he passed on to his son. He is carefully explaining to them about sharing with each other and about not worrying if you are a boy and get a girl one.I love Ryan’s face-he is clearly taking in all of Granddad’s wisdom on the matter-and I think half wondering if he is going to end up with a girl one or not. And maybe considering how just seconds before him and his cousin were duking it out over the Cars board. He adores Aaron’s dad-so if Granddad says share, well than share he must.

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That little grin is priceless-he was sure pleased that he got to at least hold a “boy one” first.

…Then back to Granddad when they all realized that there was still plastic on them, and the real fun was about to start as they got to watch him get out him pocket knife to cut off the plastic.

Lots of handstand practice on this vacation from Abby. Her and Erika had doing handstands on their summer goals for this summer, and vacation wasn’t going to stop them from working on those.

 

Erika loves drawing! She has won the art award at school the last two years and have gotten to have pieces down at the School District Building and Art Center in town. This is her interpretation of Aaron while they were driving here. Pretty good if I do say so myself. She was pretty proud of it, and would introduce it as her “masterpiece”.

There were a ton of crabs on the beach, and the kids loved trying to catch them in buckets and try to feed them random things. We had a steady supply of crabs for guests the entire week. On one of the nights, some of the older kids and adults all headed down to the beach to try and catch some while they were all out. There were lots of shrieks and running around from all of us.

     

Ryan and Scott loved going out with Aaron to jump in the waves-so much so that on this day Ryan’s was happy to have whatever board he got-Mermaid or not, this kid loved going in the water.

Ethan and I would take switch off being outside with him in the front carrier for a while, and then back inside playing in his Exersaucer while everyone else was outside. The mosquitos were SO bad there because of all of the seaweed that had come in with the tide and was left on the sand, that we couldn’t be out for too long. Note to self-we used some bug spray wipes to wipe down his body and it worked great-no bites at all for him. I wish everyone else was as lucky. Even with spraying, almost everyone was completely bitten from head to toe. We found out that all beaches are not created equal, and unfortunately this one came with lots of mosquitos.

Ethan 4 months old

We had two babies and a set of twins there-all with the same binkie, so Ethan quickly got a monogrammed one so he wouldn’t loose it. He loves that binkie, and so do we! One blue Soothie binkie=a happy baby at our house.

We took turns cooking each night. Pizza night from Sams was a a big it with all the kids (and parents too), but they especially loved trying to feed some to their pet crab.

My crazy teenagers trying to be all suave for the camera…

..”Oh Austin your so cute!”… “I know, right?! Have you seen my dimple?”…

…Yeah, we’re awesome! Hang loose dude! Did you hear we tried to surf today?” (true story)…

…”Okay fine, we’ll be normal, Mom.” Kind of.

One of the days Uncle Brian and Warren, Aaron’s brothers, rented some canoes, more boogie boards and a surfboard for all of the kids to play around with. Austin and Brianna both tried out the surfboard. I think they both realized just how hard that is. The tide kept pushing them down wind so fast, that half the time was spent walking back pulling the surfboard behind them. I wished I had had my camera when Austin when out-he was able to get up several times and ride a wave in.

You can see just how far the tide would pull them down from where our house was. Poor Brooke was getting used to walking that long walk back with the tube.

Lots of shell and crab finding throughout the week…

  

A storm moved in one of the days, and the clouds looked pretty amazing, and a little bit scary. It reminded me how devastating it must be when a hurricane plows through here. The beach house we were staying ins up on stilts, and during the night while we were lying in bed you could feel the house sway a little bit. It was the craziest feeling. I think if I lived in a beach house I might end up sea sick most of the time. Ha!

Some of our favorite moments from the week:

• Getting to live in our swimsuits most of the week
• Talking and playing around with cousins
• Having dinner together every night (and me not having to cook every night. That felt like a real vacation!)
• Watching the kids love the water so much
• Austin learning to surf
• Catching crabs on the beach at midnight
• Capture the flag with water guns
• Staying up late talking the last night before we left
• Drinking bottled water the whole week because the well water was a yellow/orange color? I don’t about favorite on this one-maybe I should have said most “memorable” moments
• Becoming experts on putting on bug spray
• Having a huge water fight
• Watermelon eating contest
• Playing out in the sand when the tide went out for the night
• Playing beach volleyball and beach soccer
• Getting slushies from the stand down the street
• Brianna working on her tan