Summer Summary

With my blogging efforts seriously lacking, it is time for me to catch up a bit and document our super fun summer!  So here's the whirlwind tour...

It started with a fantastic couple of days at the beach house with 2 of my best friends from college, Liz and Becky.  We talked and shopped and read and talked more and slept on the beach and ate fantastic food and talked even more!  I love those girls and they always provide such needed therapy!  We really missed the other girls in our gang, but hopefully we can get a few more to come next time.  Somehow I don't have a picture of the three of us, but here's the view from the beach house :)

Scott had lots of fun at Scout camp building stuff, shooting stuff, knocking stuff down, throwing stuff...  You know - exactly what 9-year-old boys love doing!  Check out the video of him trying archery.  He was great!

We finally were brave enough to do a couple of REAL camping trips!  Last year we just bought the gear and "camped" in our backyard.  This year we did a couple of short trips - one to Scotts Flat Lake above Nevada City and the other to Sugar Pine Point state park on the west shore of Tahoe.  Sugar Pine Point was definitely our favorite and we would go back again.  I tried to recreate all my favorite camping memories as a kid, including eating lemon drops and lots of other treats we wouldn't get at home, playing card games or board games in the dark by the light of the lantern, doing the "dishes" by throwing the paper plates in the fire, and swimming.  We were able to do all of those!  We may be a little more adventurous next year and do a longer trip up in the Redwoods.

We decided to spend the hottest week of the summer in St. George, UT -- where is was another 5-10 degrees hotter than in Sacramento.  But we has lots of fun visiting Grandma and Grandpa and several of the Syphi cousins.  Thank goodness for the indoor pool and the inflatable water slide in the back yard.  The kids were definitely entertained!

While in St. George, we took a day trip to Zion Canyon, a place I haven't been for 20 years.  I forgot how beautiful it is!  The kids loved playing in the Virgin River.  We HAVE to come back when our kids are a little bigger and spend more time in this place!

And for a little intermission at home, we were able to test drive the Tesla Model S, our dream car.  Given the recent safety ratings that came out (it received the highest rating EVER for any car), if we truly love our kids, we will get one. :)  Scott is totally onboard with this plan!

Then back on the road...  Next we spent some time at the beach house near Monterrey, our favorite family getaway.  On the drive down, we were able to stop in Palo Alto and have fun visiting Papa and Pauline!  The kids put on a nice crazy show for them and are begging to go back to swim in their pool.  Then on to the beach!  We did the usual -- playing the freezing waves, digging holes, flying kites, searching for sand dollars, building sand castles and feeding the ducks.  We had some dear friends from our Palo Alto days come hang out with us for a couple of days.  It was great to see Jason & Elisabeth and Jeff & Terri and their kids.  We've grown up!

Then conveniently, I was assigned to teach a class in Austin, which meant I could go a little early and spend the weekend in Dallas with Cindy and fam!  That was awesome timing since I was very anxious to meet my new adorable niece, Baby Rachel.  She is a doll.  The best part (other than hanging out with the fam) was eating some real Texas BBQ.  Check this out:

The last week before school was filled with other awesome activities, like more swimming, Chuck E Cheese, playing with friends, and finally dinner at Woody's - the kids' favorite restaurant.

Now let the school year begin!