i love summer!!

i love summer! it has been such a nice summer so far. i have REALLY enjoyed the down time from our regular crazy schedule!! i have tried to make it just simple and fun. we have spent quite a few days at the beach so far and plan to go a lot more before summer is over! patrick is LOVING surfing and is getting really good!! he has gone a lot! he tries to squeeze it in before or after football practice. by the way...he had such a great time at efy (see prior post for explanation). the experience was life changing for him!! he had so much fun that corey decided to go this last week to efy in santa barbara as well. we hadn't registered her ahead of time so we made a bunch of phone calls and finally got a hold of someone on sunday night. they ended up having room for her so we drove 4 hours to santa barbara on monday morning, dropped her off and then had a 4 hour drive home. she had a fabulous time as well...what a neat spiritual experience that they both had! i am sooo thankful they were able to go!!! corey ended up taking the train home on friday for only $38.00. it cost me $140.00 in gas when i drove her there on monday and drove home. gas prices...uuuuugh!!!

yesterday my cousin joelle, her son aidan and her boyfriend, dave came to our house to stay for a day and a half! i love it when she comes. we are so much alike and spend most of the time laughing!! as tradition calls for we have to make a yummy dessert and watch a scary movie...and we did both. we made pazookies (I don't know if i spelled that correctly but it's a yummy dessert they make at bj's restaurant) and we watched "the forgotten". it was fun and it was really nice to meet dave and to get to know him! today we went to the beach (west mission beach) and had a blast!! although the waves were lousy for patrick and nathan (patricks long time friend that went with us), they seemed to have more fun boogie boarding today! we were by the jetty and joelle, dave, julia, aubrey and i went over to look at the little tide pools and crabs on the rocks. we came home and had dinner and then went to see "journey to the center of the earth". what a fun movie, although we didn't get to see it in 3-d which would have made it even better! after the movie joelle, aidan and dave had to head back to visalia. darn it!! we both wished we could have had more time together because we enjoy being together so much. we are hoping to take a trip to visalia some time before the end of the year ( i promise joelle!! ) so, here are some pictures from today! enjoy!