Zoo Expedition and Farewells

Ok- I am pretty sure I can finish talking about our trip in this post. Whew!!

Before we get started, I have to put these pictures of Gavin up. He found the DVDs and went to town. My mom gathered them all up to take away the temptation... and he simply moved to the second shelf to keep the mischief up. Silly boy.

The Saturday before Father's Day, we went to the Sacramento Zoo. We got to go with my parents and my sister. I am so glad we did! If you haven't noticed, James has a love for animals (just like his mommy and daddy) so this was an exciting trip. We got to see a bunch of animals up close. Yaaay!! The best part for James (which we didn't get pictures of because daddy had the camera... shame, daddy) ;) was the monkeys. He loooooved them. They were pretty entertaining... and pretty hard to pull him away from them. But we did and he recovered. 

The Monday before we left, we headed over to Brad's parents house one last time. What surprised us was all the family in California were there too! So... there were 11 grandkids and 7 kids and kids-in-law (brad's oldest bro couldn't get away from work). What fun! And to add to the fun in true Central Valley tradition- it was over 100. Aunt Amy (yes, i have a SIL named Amy) was awesome and brought her slip-n-slide for the kiddos to enjoy. Would James have anything to do with it? No. He wanted the horses. Luckily, they also got the hose  going with the sprinkler so he finally would play in that... then he got interested in the slide and had lots of fun. It was great catching up with everyone before we left.

We were lame and didn't get any pictures of the boys with Brad's parents (i know, SO lame of us!!). But the day we left, my dad came home from work to see us a little bit before we went. I had the grand idea to at least get pictures of them with the kids. So here are a few of those:

Also before we left we took advantage of extra hands and got some nice photos of the boys and our family   in my parent's backyard. 

This one of James is so cute- but so sad his smile is behind a dinosaur!

We didn't do much, but just being with family and enjoying each other was plenty. Hopefully it won't be too long till we see everyone again!