Catching Up

I must confess I have gotten out of the habit of posting - but things have been busy! A wonderful week long trip with family and cousins up to the North of California - (try, Big Sur before the fires) with lots of camping in our condo-sized tent, games, hiking, beaches, a train-ride through the coastal redwood forest (big, big trees! and very cool too. they literally suck in the morning fog and then exude the moisture on hot days for their own personal airconditioning. yay for sequoia sempervirons!) We hung out at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and rode the fourth oldest still running wooden rollercoaster The Big Dipper. We played about four games of Lord of the Rings Risk - the battle for Middle Earth could not have been more intense. We ate a lot. We went to the Monterrey Aquarium. We stayed at LimeKiln state park and wandered the rocky coasts. My cousin Nath undertook a miraculous rescue of his sister's shoes which were swept into the surf during an intense volleyball game (while less motivated people watched said shoes drift out). We climbed some trees, skipped a prodigious amount of rocks (Nath clearly won with upwards of 15! I was impressed). We spent a lot of time just together and even a few days out of cell-phone reception, which was rather horrific for our "attached" girls (my sister Lauren and cousin Moira) who hiked miles in an unfruitful search for reception. Lauren was even more pouty and despondent, but cheered up a bit after using a payphone that was practically a relic. All in all, it was really nice.
Since then I have just been working - swim lessons are picking up and its actually really fun, unless I have to dunk screaming kids or coax crying ones off the wall. However, it is really rewarding to have kids like Gracie who's 3 to go from crying to saying, "me want to go under now!" I am, as always, happy to oblige.