Santa Cruz - Sunday & Monday morning

 The Monday morning after school got out, Emily headed to Oakcrest Girl's Camp for the week.  We really, really missed her and the rest of us spent the first week of summer break doing tennis lessons for Jack & Lindsey, sewing class for Lindsey & Kate, art class for Lindsey & Kate, piano lessons & soccer practice.

We also welcomed Jon's mom in town on Tuesday.   She had come for Jon's nephew's wedding.  Matt & Kaitlyn were married on Thursday, June 13th.  We were able to enjoy Diane that week and then go to Matt's wedding reception on Thursday night.

On Friday, we got all packed and ready and waited for Emily to get home from Oakcrest.  We (especially me!) were so excited to see her again.  We let her shower and we ran a load of wash for her and then loaded in the Suburban and headed for Reno.

We spent the night in Reno, got up Saturday morning and drove to San Francisco.   In San Francisco, I discovered that my camera didn't work, so we tried to take pictures with our video camera.  I will try to figure out how to get those downloaded and hopefully do a separate post on that day. 

We spent the night in Oakland and then headed to the Oakland LDS Temple in the morning, toured the visitor's center and then drove to Santa Cruz.  

We met the Cowden's at the beach house around 2:30 in the afternoon.  What a great house Becky found!  It had 5 bedrooms and 2 separate living rooms and kitchens.    Becky & her kids have gone down to Santa Cruz every year.  It's is where Becky's husband, Willie (who passed away 15 years ago) grew up.   Becky and the kids know all the great beaches, restaurants, stores, etc.   It was so, so fun to go with them!!!

That night, we headed down to the harbor and got dinner - some got clam chowder, others got grilled cheese sandwiches.  I tried a grilled crab sandwich (yummy!) and Jon had fish sticks that were even more delicious.

Then we put kids to bed and played Guesstures.  On Monday morning, we got up and went to part of the Redwood Forest.  The trees were breathtaking, huge and amazing.  It was the perfect little hike for our group!

A huge thank you to Becky & Becky for all the great pictures!

 The Mortensen's

 

 Hailey, Hannah & Brooklyn feeding the birds

 

 At the candy store

 

 Searching for sea lions - Kate, Lindsey, me, John, Jon, Annie, Becky, Misty & Sophia

 

 Kate

 

 Hailey & Jon

 

Most of our group - minus Jack, Becky & John

 





 

 Jake & Sophia

 

 4 cute girls - Sophia, Kate, Brooklyn & Hannah

 

 Jesse, Rich & Annie

 

Brooklyn took every chance she could get to style hair!