First Beach Day of the Summer

Last week ended up being a lot CRAZIER than I had anticipated. Of course, we knew it would be a bit crazy towards the end, because the Dunnihoos were coming. But I thought I'd have 3 fairly relaxing days to get ready for that. ...

On the 22nd (Monday), we had a set of missionaries over for dinner. Not a big deal. We do that sometimes.

On the 23rd (Tuesday), I did some shopping in preparation for Julie's clan getting here, just before my presidency meeting that night, which lasted 2 HOURS! Whew! And I was supposed to hit Wal-mart to complete my shopping that night before coming home, but ... I was exhausted. I had been cleaning the house all that day, too, to get ready for guests. So, basically, I was done.

Then Wednesday rolls around (the 24th, you know), and our new friend, Megan Hebdon, who lives in our complex, which is very exciting, invited us to go to the beach with her and some other sisters in our ward. I was kind of back and forth on going. It's quite a lot of work going to the beach, packing everything you need for an almost-3-year-old and a baby. Plus, we weren't sure we would all be able to fit in her truck. But ... we decided to give it a try, and lo! We miraculously fit 3 car seats in the back of her truck! We went down to Zuma for a hot, fun, and fabulous day at the beach, the first one of the summer for us, and one of the few, I'm sure (it's just not super practical going to the beach with a little, still-nursing baby). We had fun! Brooke loved playing in the sand and with the other kids there. Camille wasn't quite sure about the sand at first. But after a little while, she was crawling and rolling around in it and really loving it. It was really fun for me, later, trying to get all that sand off of her. :) Brooke, Camille and I spent some time chasing waves together, giving my arms quite a workout. The water was freezing! But we had a lot of fun.

 As we were driving home from the beach in early afternoon, we hit a ton of traffic, which we found out later was from a brush fire right in our town! They had to close portions of the 5, and we were both worried about getting home on time. Both of us were feeding missionaries that night (yes ... again), and we had to get home, get cleaned up, and get dinner on the table. It all worked out, of course. It was very smokey here, and ash was falling and blowing everywhere. Fortunately, no one in our ward was hurt or really mixed up with the fire, though there were a few members whose backyards were virtually on fire.

Daniel took the missionaries home after dinner and finished up the shopping in preparation for the Dunnihoos, while I got the girls to bed and started rearranging the house and getting things cleaned up and set up. They arrived around 8pm that night, and we were all very excited to have them here. We chatted for a while, brought their things in, got beds ready and then Julie got her boys to bed. And, as is custom in my family, we stayed up talking way too late. :)