July, Oh July!

Kate's new catchphrase: "Swimming? Swimming? SWIM-MING!!!"

July was a long month. Sure, it only had 31 days in it, but we crammed about three months worth of stuff into that one month. Good thing I learned all about cramming in college.

My company takes a company-wide break for a week around July 4th, so we headed down to Huntington Beach for a few days. "HB" was where Jaime and I met, and it still remains one of our favorite places to be. We got a good rate at the Hilton Waterfront Resort right on Huntington Beach, and had a great three days at the pool and the beach.

The Hilton Waterfront's slogan should be: "Hey, we're not the Hyatt, but you can see it from here!"

Kate loved the pool, and we got to spend one of the days with Jaime's sister Brooke and her family who are back in California after finishing graduate school in Boston.

Sydney x Kate = Trouble Squared

Kate loved having her cousin Sydney visit, and hasn't stopped identifying everything she sees as belonging to Sydney ("Syndey's glasses? Sydney's cup? Sydney's car?").

The weather was perfect for the beach and we had a great time. Kate preferred the water temperature of the hotel pool to that of the ocean, but she loved the sand on the beach (click on the pic above of her for a detailed view of her face). It was great to get away for a few days.

We arrived home on July 3rd, and while we were too tired to take the kids to watch the local firework show, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that we could see the fireworks from our house. Impressive show, I must add. Beats the pants off what they used to do at Lagoon when I was a kid. The next morning we renewed our tradition of having "Firework Flapjacks" for breakfast. Kate ate an adult-sized portion and asked for more. No surprise there.

"Hey, can I get some more whipped cream over here?"

Brooke's family and Jaime's other sister Macall joined us for a barbecue that evening, and Kate was thrilled to spend more time with Sydney:

Auntie Macall spent most of the time campaigning for the "Favorite Auntie" award

I returned to work on Monday, and I must say its great when your entire company is gone at the same time. When you come back from this week of vacation, you don't have a week's worth of email to catch up on. Good thing, because I wasn't back for very long: that Thursday evening we packed up the new minivan and headed for Utah. My brother Daniel had returned from his mission in Brazil, and Jaime's sister Courtney was getting married the next week.

It was great to spend a few days with my family and to see Daniel after more than two years. More than once he used the Portuguese word for something because the English word temporarily escaped him. And his accent, even when he speaks English, is very noticeable.

We had decided to bless Davis while we were in Utah since my family was there and Jaime's had traveled there for Courtney's wedding.

Papa Anderson and Grandpa Benson

Grandma Benson and "Nonna" Anderson

It was great having both of our families and some friends there, and Davis stayed relatively quiet during most of the blessing. Then he screamed his head off.

We spent the next few days at a condo up near Powder Mountain ski resort in Wolf Creek Village, Eden, Utah. It's a pretty gutsy move to name your city "Eden" - the pioneers who settled there many years ago must have felt it was justified. Turns out they were on to something. The idyllic valley just up the canyon from Ogden is gorgeous in the summer. We had a huge condo with plenty of room for three families and seven little kids who stayed in one unit, and Jaime's parents and two other families stayed in another unit. I'm pretty sure the kids wore out the path to the pool. My brothers-in-law and I made good use of the huge media room in the basement, where we played many hours of Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 on the big screen t.v. We took the kids to a petting zoo, went fishing on the South Fork of the Ogden River, had a barbecue and had a great time.

Courtney and R.J.'s wedding was at Snowbasin Ski Resort and was beautiful. I didn't get any pictures because I was always holding either Kate or Davis. I've realized that when we only had Kate, I would just dump her with Jaime and take pictures of the two of them. Now that Davis is here, the camera stays in the car or in the pocket, and we'll have to rely on memories! Kate made a beautiful flower girl, and the wedding was a lot of fun. Months ago I had taken some pictures for them to include in their wedding invitations (my first official shoot), and I guess I can finally post some of them:

"Respect the moustache!"

I'm not sure Courtney found this as one as amusing as R.J. and I did

The drive home from Eden in one day was not as bad as I had feared. The kids were mostly peaceful (except for that 4 1/2 hour stretch where Davis was inconsolable and Jaime had to sit in the back seat, reaching over into the middle seat to hold Davis's pacifier in his mouth to keep him from screaming). Other than that, the kids looked like this: