ethan, elli, and amelias blessing day.

the triplets blessings fell on a weekend when it was possible for us to be there. so, we packed up and flew out of sacramento and immediately hit the ground running in utah. there are lots of good, new-to-us places to eat here in CA but there are lots of good, we-already-love-them-and-miss-them places to eat in UT. so, of course, the first thing we did was grab lunch at one of our favorite places, the red iguana. we ate lunch with my mom. she and ricks both got mole and i got a delicious fajita stuffed with steak, red onions, and pineapple. yum. we followed up with shakes from taco amigo, a personal favorite. another yummy dinner was spent at a new japanese-thai restaurant. i pigged out on a seafood tempura platter, gyoza, and mango sticky rice. so very good, even if the service was sub-par.

the rest of the trip was filled with baby holding, baby feeding, bbq-ing, dog petting, and movie watching. most of our time was spent at alicias house, she is, after all, the one with the babies, the dog, and the theater room. the babies are all really adorable. ethan is a super chill baby- except when he is hungry. elli is the sweet one. and amelia is the feisty one. it was fun to finally be able to see and hold them. the blessing day was really nice. dan gave some beautiful blessings and the babies were so cute and good throughout church. alicia had planned a nice gathering for afterward. everyone pitched in and it turned out lovely. it was such a quick trip and we wish we had more time to see everyone that we wanted to and spend more time with those we did get to see.

i also did take one picture-- here are the triplets loaded up to go to church. so cute.

summer break and santa cruz.

the two weeks that ricks had off between the end of finals and the start of his internship was spent doing a lot of lounging. he was so relieved to not have any pressure to do anything that we indeed did a whole lot of nothing. it was so nice. he played a lot of video games- diablo, to be exact- and i read my way through the whole millennium trilogy. as a side note, that series was so good that the book that im reading now seems super lame in comparison. i also decided to take up knitting and im about 2/3rds of the way done with my first blanket.

we also went to santa cruz for an overnight camping trip. i found a camping site a stairway away from the beach. we didnt have anything planned except cooking over the fire and going to the beach. so, we cooked over the fire like champs and then spent the rest of our time huddled on the beach. i was working my way through the girl who played with fire and spent my time wrapped up in a towel on the beach reading while ricks used the ocean as a kayak treadmill. it was chilly but really pretty and very fun. we didnt stay long but it was just the perfect little adventure before we set off for utah...