What a week!

Last Monday Kymberli and Stephanie came to visit. Stephanie was really just the "courier," if you will, but we had a great two days while she was here. She was bringing Kymberli for her 13 year old trip. For some if you who don't know, my parents give our nieces and nephews a trip out to Texas for their 13th birthday. It started with Mark back in the summer of 2003. That same year Geoffrey turned 13, but he went to DC instead of coming to Texas...we love him all the same (and we probably would have chosen the same thing!). Jakob was next, he visited in December 2005, Scott in December 2006 and now Kymberli. To think that visiting us is a gift, well, it makes us feel pretty special!

We have been going a million miles an hour since the arrived. Kymberli got some pretty special things while she was here, themost noteworthy being riding lessons. She got to spend all day Wednesday, and all morning Thursday and Friday riding. She loved every minute of it. We have also gone shopping, seen Evan Almighty, gone to Six Flags Over Texas, gone to the Rodeo, and had pedicures. I'm telling you, we have done it all and we still have two days before we head back to California!!!

It has been so fun for Kevin and I to spend time with each of these kiddos. We have virtually no rules when they are here, and we rarely say no to their requests! It has been fun to look back over all the trips and see how each one was unique to each kid. A HUGE thank you to my parents who provide the funding for these trips, their grandkids LOVE it (which is the purpose) but their kids LOVE it too, which is just an added bonus.

Yesterday on the way back from Six Flags we were thinking about how long it will be until the next one. Cari will turn 10 in the fall, so she will not be out here until the end of 2011. And by the time Josh is 13 Kevin will be 41!!! By the time the next one can visit we will be parents and our title of "Professional Aunt and Uncle" will be gone! It makes us sad, but of course happy that we will finally be parents. Then we realized that after we have our child our nieces and nephews may still want to come visit, only this time to visit their cousin, not their OLD Aunt and Uncle...we're OK with that!

Happy Father's Day

First of all, Happy Father's Day to all the dads. Of course, I think I have the best Dad in the whole world, but that goes without saying. However, we do know some pretty good dads, they just happen to be our close friends. We decided to spend our Father's Day (since we couldn't see our own dads) with the best dads that we know in Texas!

Sunday afternoon the Swansons, the Crawfords and the Lopai (their last name is Lopez, and truly I cannot figure out how to make that plural, and it's kind of joke to call the them the Lopai, so there you go) and Jason and Seana came over. Lance and Jordan Sewell came over later, but Jennifer and baby Joshua (one week old) decided to stay home. We had a full house and a ton of fun.

One of the highlights of the day was the food. It took almost 6 years, but Kevin finally found a meat market that sells tri-tip! We were SO excited! We have talked about this certain type of meat for years, and we were finally able to cook some and show our friends how good it was. Everyone loved it. The guy we bought it from seasoned some for us, and then we used his BBQ sauce as a marinade for the other one. WOW! It has been a while since we have eaten good tri-tip, and these did not disappoint. Another highlight was some more of the food. Ramiro makes some great beans, and he brought a huge pot full for our meal. They are SO good! You just can't quit eating them, they are awesome. Thanks Ramiro!

The kids, of course ate the food, but liked the water toys much better. Lauren and Ethan ran around in the water and just squealed and laughed. It had been raining all day and as soon as it stopped we hurried out there to get some playing time. The sun even came out so we were pretty excited.



Here are some pictures from the day.

Kymberli and Stephanie are coming to visit today! YIPPEE! Steph will stay a few days and Kymberli gets to stay until we head out to California. I'll post some pictures of their stay right before we leave!

More Changes

Furniture EVERYWHERE!

So we are slowly fixing up our house. As you know we finished the kitchen not too long ago. We have remodeled the laundry room. We stripped the wallpaper from the bathroom and retextured the walls, and we have added paint to nearly every wall in the house. The nest step was the carpet. We had pretty good carpet when we moved in, but it was VERY light. So, it got dirty very quickly. Well, a week ago Saturday we got rid of the gross carpet and we not have nice, new, clean carpet. We chose a color that will not show the dirt. In the first picture you can see the old carpet compared to the new carpet...what a difference!

My favorite room in the house is the guest room. As you can see the guest room is yellow with a California beach theme (surf boards and stuff) and it just looks awesome with the carpet.

You might think I am making up this story, but I am not. I am reaching for significance, however, but not making it up. So, the Saturday that we had the carpet put in was a very boring day for me. One of us had to be here all day. We had no TV and no computer because they were unplugged. Our furniture was all over the place (even on the front lawn). Men were in and out of our house and by the end of the day we killed about 10 flies that had snuck in. I was totally stir crazy, I do not do well when I can't be busy all of the time. Anyway, I was sitting on the ottoman in the kitchen (sounds so funny) looking at Kevin's globe, trying to keep myself occupied. I always have China facing up on the globe, just because a piece of my heart is there already. So, the name of our carpet color was Gobi. The sales lady made a joke and said that she thinks people are high off carpet fumes when they name the colors because they are just words or letters put together. As I am looking at the globe (China of course) I saw in large letters, right near the border of China and Mongolia GOBI DESERT! I'm not kidding, we chose carpet named after the color of a desert in China!

I love it!!!