Summer Visit

We wasted no time getting down to California after school ended. The time I was able to get off work actually started during finals week, but Joshua was able to get all of his stuff done early. 

We left after I got off work on Thursday and arrived in Modesto during the night. The next morning we began our visit in style with brunch on the patio with Dave, Joy, Solace, and Amari.

We had a tour of the garden and I had tomato envy when I saw that a number of Dave's plants already have beautiful ripe tomatoes on them. They were delicious to eat while we were there. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon relaxing and visiting with Dave, including a delicious sushi lunch. Mid-afternoon we headed down to Visalia and met up with everyone at Mom and Dad's house for dinner and a sleepover. It was pretty exciting to get to see all seven of our nieces and nephews in one day. 

The next morning we had breakfast together and played games and hung out.

Heather and I are reading Moby Dick together for our classic literature book club, which is just the two of us. It's been a great book so far and fun to read through at the same time.

After church on Sunday, we had lunch at the new Blaze pizza place. Then we went over to the Nickell's house to check out their garden and the arcade console that Isaac and Evan built together. After awhile we all headed out to Mom and Dad's again for Sunday night dinner. It was Isaac and Heather's week to make dinner and they made a Mediterranean feast for dinner with chocolate cake for dessert. 

We had decided that since Dad's birthday was the next day we should have a chocolate cake recipe taste test. Heather used the Hershey's chocolate cake recipe and the next day I used Trisha Bushway's chocolate cake recipe that is a bit more work but one we have been enjoying for years. The Hershey's cake recipe was delicious and a great start to our taste test.

Dad was able to get most of Monday off for his birthday and we took a trip up to Sequoia National Park. We found a picnic area by a meadow with no one else around and enjoyed a picnic lunch together and some relaxing in the sun.

After lunch, we spent a little time exploring a patch of flowers in the field.

Next, we headed over to the General Sherman Tree, which Emery was particularly excited to hear was the largest tree in the world.

Back at Mom and Dad's house, we had ribs for birthday dinner and Trisha's chocolate cake for dessert. Both cakes were delicious and there were things we liked about each, so there really wasn't a clear winner, besides all of us who got to eat all the chocolate cake.

Wednesday morning, we returned to Modesto and spent the next couple days hanging out with Gayle, Dave, Joy, Lamar, Solace, and Amari.

On Friday, we got to see the dance show that Joy had been working on putting together at the dance studio. The theme for the week long dance camp this year was Under the Big Top and the dancers ranged in age from 4 to 10, I think. Anyway, it was a fun show and Joy and her team had a done a great job putting it together.

Saturday we spent most of the day relaxing at the house, then had a dinner with everyone to celebrate Father's Day. After Lamar and Joy left to put their kids to bed, we played cards with the new cards Gayle got during her quilting retreat at Lake Tahoe last week.

 

Sunday we made the long drive back home and discovered that even though it had been cool and cloudy most of the time we were gone, our garden had grown a lot.

And we had ripe raspberries; what a treat!

Our borage plants were huge and blooming.

We brought home lots of grapefruit, plums, and peaches from our parents' trees and promptly set to work eating and processing them. We dehydrated and made fruit leather from the plums and froze and made peach jam from the peaches. This jam was our first canning project for the year, so it was pretty exciting.