Summer trip home

I don't like leaving my cats, even though I have someone who comes and feeds them while I'm gone, I hate that they are basically alone the whole time. For this reason, I only go home for about 3 weeks during the summer. Since that is the only time I get to see my family every year that makes everything very rushed. I fly in and out of San Francisco because that is considered my home base and where I was hired from. I have to squeeze a trip to Idaho in there while I'm home and sometimes, if I'm lucky I can squeeze Utah in there too.

This year, my best friend Dawn was able to fly out to California from Tennessee and spend some time with me there. That was really awesome because we hadn't seen each other for a couple of years. I LOVE spending time with her. She's just an awesome and amazing person. This trip was also exciting because my sister now lives in her super cool house right by the ocean. It's such a neat little community along the coast there. There are a few small towns right along the coast and they are all just super cute. It's pretty amazing to be so close to a city as big as San Francisco, but then when you get to those towns along the coast they feel very small town and quaint. There's also lots of farm land, and it's almost always foggy and just cool. There's also a lot of whale sightings so that is fun. 

I basically froze the whole time I was home. I went from about 120F to 65-75F. 

I made the trip home to Idaho so I could be there for the 4th of July. I LOVE 4th of July in Idaho Falls. We had an awesome family get together for lunch in my parents back yard. My mom is so cute! She always has these fun ideas and things for us to do. My mom and my sister planned a bunch of games for us to play like a pass the parcel type game, a price is right game, a draw a picture on a plate game... just silly fun stuff. The highlight of the day was the maypole. My mom has always wanted to wind the maypole. When she was in elementary school in Orem, UT, the 4th grade got to wind the maypole. It was something the kids really looked forward to, but sadly my mom moved before she got to wind the maypole and she's always wanted to. So my mom decided to build her own maypole this year. Both her sisters were there to help along with lots of grandkids. It was a little bit of a rough start but we kinda got it worked out by the end. It was really cute. 

For the fireworks my dad had found this interesting technique to take photos of the fireworks so both he and I set up cameras with tripods to get some shots. We kinda had a bad location and I thought we didn't get anything but it turns out we got some cool shots. 

After Idaho I headed back to California for a couple of days before it was time to take off again. As always, it went by way too fast but it was a lot of fun. 

KLM economy plus- some seats have this extra space-- it was AWESOME!

I love my sisters kitties. 

BACON! Not in Kuwait anymore. 

Dawn taking a break at Union Square as we toured the city. 

Coastal sunset

Cool enchanted forest my dad/sisters found. 

Muir woods. 

Always foggy on the coast..... 

...then nothing but sunshine when you get to the other side of the mountain. 

Marley being a cuddle whore. Loves his attention. 

My sister has a hot tub. I had to use it to thaw out I was so cold. 

Also, my sister's turtle had taken to laying eggs. 

This little dude almost never sleeps. When all the other kitties are sleeping he's still awake. 

San Juan Bautista Mission. I had never gone to a mission while I lived in California so I needed to fix that. 

Two story outhouse. The top floor was for women. 

Giant pink Hummer limo next to the historic mission- awesome. 

This is a place near my sister's house. They change the paint on the horse every month. 

I bought a new suit case because it was awesome. 

I told my nieces they would know which suitcase was mine. They kept asking, it's that one yours? until they saw mine and then August turned to me and said, THAT one is yours. It has cats all over it if you couldn't tell. 

Long story with the camels-- basically we couldn't use them for what we wanted so I volunteered to take them and give them to my nieces. It was so awesome how much they loved them. I didn't expect that. 

Like I said- they LOVED the camels. They were dressing them up to be a bride and a groom. 

These are the fireworks pictures we took. Kinda fun huh?

Headed back to the coast from San Jose. Easy to know where to go, just head for the cloud. 

Super foggy, trying to see whales. 

We thought the enchanted forest would look really cool in the fog but it didn't. We were so disappointed. You can see how foggy it was outside, but it's like the forest had a special protection and the fog didn't come inside.