Summer Summary

It's so much better to post things as they happen and not end up abbreviating them...but let me jump backwards and post the biggest events from each month.

Starting back with June:

We ventured out to San Diego for Pearce's baby blessing. It seems so long ago now and she's grown so much since then. We had a great time visiting with everyone and it was such a joy finally getting to meet little Pearce. She is just precious!

When we arrived, we met up for some delicious shrimp burrito's at a great little Mexican restaurant and visited Jeremy's shop which was a lot of fun.

Pearce's baby blessing was wonderful. It was so nice to have so many of us together for this special day.

Emily was sweet enough to show us around a little bit. The next day we spent a few hours at Balboa Park, a place with beautiful architecture.

The next few days were spent exploring a little bit. We went out to Coronado Island, across the very cool, expansive Coronado Bridge (not my photo).

I wanted to see a view of the San Diego Skyline, so we stopped at one of the first beaches we found...

...and sat out on a dock to take photos.

Next, we ventured over to the ever popular Hotel Del Coronado Resort. I'd love to be able to stay there. Big money.

We even saw a banana tree (first time for me)

We drove around the island on our way back. We were pretty close to the Mexican border but didn't want to cross due to all the visitor warnings. Instead, we stopped at Imperial beach and then headed back to our hotel.

Our final day, before heading to the airport, we explored Old Town San Diego. It was an interesting, fun place to see.

We stopped at the Mormon Batallion Center. It was really interesting to go through the demonstrations and look up my ancestor's name on the batallion registry.

During the month of June we also enjoyed our anniversary adventure to the Olympic Penninsula. Luckily I already posted that!

On to July...

We celebrated a couple of birthdays - Rod's birthday at the ranch (already posted)

and McKay's 7th birthday at the Beach Club.

We were so excited when Emily, Pearce and Jeremy came to visit all of us in Seattle!

It was so fun spending time with them.

We spent some time at the beach club...

and time up at the ranch...

How can you not just melt with that precious little face?!

And at last we come to August.

We celebrated Nicole's sweet 16...how did time pass that quickly?!

I can't pass up a picture with a child in goggles. I love it so bad. Thanks Sterling.

Nicole got tossed in the water and I think Dave even jumped in with his shorts on. Fun times.

And last but not least, here are a few more pictures from Walt, Maren and Zander's last couple days with us (first part already posted).

We had fun babysitting Zander for a few hours so Walt and Maren could go out and celebrate their anniversary. Zander is such a sweetheart.

Maren and I cracked up with this next sequence. I think we called it "synchronized planting". Rod and Walt were out on the deck trimming the tomato plant and I captured these funny images that looked too much like synchronized swimming to pass up...hope they don't mind me sharing them with the world. (Rod just looked over and asked me what in the world I'm posting...)

Rod introduced Zander to his ipod

We went out to Alki Beach at the end of a very toasty, summer day

There you go. This post seems to have gone by almost as fast as summer did!