Increasing the Speed

Hello again and welcome! Thank you for continuing to read our blog. Things have been increasingly frantic lately as the time has come for all those travel plans. If you check out the recent pictures section under "family and friends" you will see pictures of the fourth of July celebration in the park with Chris' family. His cousins and Aunt Joan were in from Texas and our dear friend Michael Valarde came down from San Fransisco with his girlfriend Vendi. (I most likely misspelled that, but she was a lovely girl anyway her name is spelled.)
The weekend surprised me by being harder that I thought it would be emotionally without Chris there. It was the first holiday I had remained home with his family without him. But, it was fun and I found out just how much Maylisa LOVES white peaches. Peaches in general, but white ones are preferred.
We went up to Monterey to visit my sister Meghan and her family. Her husband is taking some very challenging classes all squeezed into a third of the time length of a regular course for some type of training stuff. He is now a captain in the Marine Corps and I am impressed by that. Meghan is great with babies and taught May how to stand up for a few seconds on her own, how to wave and say "hi!" (which to does for minutes at time once she starts to everyone's delight)and how to plink on the keys of a real piano.
Her four children are all as dramatic, smart, quick witted and animated as she ever was, so we were on out toes the entire time. Wild fun. all of them. We were introduced to the Pigeon books for children. (Pigeon finds a hot dog is the best one.) They are highly recommended. Especially if Nathan is reading them aloud to you. :)
Haley is almost always buried in a book (which reminded me of myself at that same age) and Stephen is very sweet and helpful when he sees an opportunity to be.
Emily is very cute and shy and loves to have books read to her before bedtime which became a nightly practice between us for the last few days of our visit.
We were treated to a visit to the aquarium which turned out to be awe-inspiring. IT was incredible. Huge tanks with shark and huge tuna. An octopus tank- that was AWESOME!!! These tanks were the size of the entire wall so it felt like we were walking around on the bottom of the ocean looking at all the amazing creatures. I was moved by how creative and powerful our God must be to have thought up all the life forms and then created some of them to be so powerful. He is more powerful than any of them, and more beautiful and amazing to behold aside...amazing when you are standing right next to a 8 foot long shark swimming right in front of your face in a breath-takingly beautiful tank. We had a marvelous time and May even thought touching th slimy spongy bellied creatures in touch tank was interesting.
We are gearing up for the visit to Mom and Dad in Utah in a couple weeks and have learned that my older brother Ian will be home on top of Ivy and her kiddos being there too! I am so excited to go and see them all!