July and August 2009

Time keeps flying by! Hope this blog entry finds everyone well and happy. We've had a busy summer, but for all that business, I forget all my stellar moments. Maybe I should update more frequently?

At the end of July, we had our lovely trip West to Hawaii and California. Amazingly, it was more humid in Hawaii than in Illinois, but not by much! The girls had a fantastic time swimming in Grandma and Grandpa's pool, and discovered on the last day there how awesome playing at the beach can be. They dug castles, roads and wrote their names with coral bits. We throughly enjoyed hunting geckos but were very wary of eels and turtles in the ocean. I am happy to report that snorkeling was something of a success in that both girls were able to put their faces in the water and admire all the rainbow fish out there....while floating on a boogie board. Swimming skills improved immensely over the whole vacation, and they just love it. We saw a beautiful luau and drank "lava flow" drinks, mmmmm. We also drove into Kona and took a submarine ride, which was pretty darn cool. We saw two shipwrecks along with lots of fish and starfish. Someday Dave and I will be able to lounge in a chair and simply soak up the rays, but at this point in our lives, we had a lot of little kid adventures around our home base. Always fun, but not very refreshing. Thank goodness for naps, huh?

Sacramento was great. It was such a pleasant surprise to smell the air and see the foothills (which would be considered great mountains in Illinois). I don't know what it is about that smell or those sights, but both of us felt a very strong urge to come "home" someday. We really enjoyed splashing in the pool and discovering a new spray park. The girls got to rock out to two different evening bands at two different spots, and they just loved dancing to the music. My favorite moment was when we drove up to Placerville and had a fantastic horseback riding lesson. The girls had to go into the corral and "rope" their miniature horses, and then dress them, down to picking their hooves. After all that, actually riding the horses was kind of anti-climactic. They, of course, couldn't disagree with me more. Otherwise, we tortured Grandma and Grandpa's cats no end, and definitely decided that the "white" cat does not like children. Poor girls- that cat likes nobody. (Side note, she died recently, so I promise to have only good memories of her from now on.)

We had an adventurous trip home, and I am proud to say that neither Cassidy nor Taylor cried one bit through it all. We were delayed out of Sacramento and had a transfer in Denver that we were afraid we would miss. Well, of course that end was delayed too, so we did just fine with the transfer. The fun part of getting home was that we didn't leave Sacramento until about 6 PM. With the delay in Denver, we got home around 3 AM, I kid you not! Taylor managed to sleep in the car on the way from the airport, but Cassidy actually had to play a bit first. Yikes. I think I might have cried at that point. Oh, and that day was August 4, our anniversary. We went out a few days later. I bought a cheap card at the airport and had it propped up for Dave in the "morning" after we had slept for a bit.

I am sure lots more has happened to Cassidy and Taylor, but I'll post this now so that I can move on. I really do want to add more posts more frequently. Somehow time gets away from me. Sorry!