Hot Hot Heat

Wow, it has been a doozy of a summer so far! The temps here have been crazy hot with the intense humidity. This past weekend it hovered around 100 degrees and was quite humid, but I am happy to say that we totally survived the outdoor birthday party we went to on Saturday! We had a lot of fun, and our friend Juliff was soooo surprised. We stayed in the shade the whole time, and we made sure we were staying hydrated! We also guzzled some Gatorade before the party, and I think that helped us a lot. We were outside for about 5 hours though, so when we got home (around 8pm), we were exhausted!  We just relaxed on the couch and then went to bed around 10pm. We felt completely zapped of energy!

The Birthday Boy! He was definitely surprised! Oh and to the left of the cake are cookie bars I made! 

On Sunday morning we were up pretty early (that's what happens when you go to bed at 10pm!), and we took Guinness on a hike on the nature trail near our house! The trail runs right by a creek and it's completely shaded, and I forgot how much cooler it is there!  It has to be at least 10 degrees cooler than it is anywhere else. It was a HOT day, so I'm glad we were able to take the hike nice and early.

Guinness jumping over the branch! And McGee had just jumped over too but was looking to make sure Guinness was following! 

I love this one! Guinness is looking up at Kevin and he's so darn happy. 

After the hike, we went to see Star Trek!  It was AMAZING. I think it was the best of the Star Trek movies so far (and RIP Anton Yelchin... Ugh, so sad. He was such a great actor). After the movie was over, we ran some errands for a few hours, and then we returned home and decided to just relax and have a movie day. One movie that we watched was The Departed, which McGee has been trying to get me to watch for YEARS but I kept resisting because I'd just always heard what an intense movie it was, and I rarely feel in the mood for extremely intense movies. Well, I LOVED it. It was SO good! Jack Nicholson was crazy good in it (and just crazy...), and Leonardo DiCaprio was crazy good too.

Last night (Monday night), we had a really massive storm!! It was soooo bad, and our power flickered off a few times... and just as we were like "Ummm let's head downstairs to the den" and we were gathering our stuff to head downstairs we heard an incredibly loud BOOM, and I could see through the dining room window that a large tree limb had fallen. I think it must've hit our roof a little bit, but I could see it on the ground by our house and it had broken into a bunch of pieces. So, we did go downstairs to our den area and hang down there until the storm was over at about 10pm. We briefly investigated outside to make sure our roof, etc was ok, and we'll deal with that tree limb soon. I took a picture of it today, but I don't know if you can tell how big it is from the picture! There are pieces of it everywhere too. Scary!!!

That "little" box by the window is our AC unit, if that give you any idea of scale in this picture... That tree is HUGE. 

Here's a different angle of part of the huge branch and some of its pieces. 

We definitely have some yardwork to do this weekend if the weather holds up! We'll have to chop up that huge branch and clean up the mess from the storm. I hope you're all having good summers so far, and I hope your weather is cooperating for you!! 

Christmas in July, and a Bathroom Update!

We had a Christmas Party at our house last weekend! McGee and his friends have a tradition of getting together for a Christmas Party, and this past Christmas nobody was able to meet up during the holiday season (and Fro lives in Massachusetts). So, we all decided that we'd do Christmas in July this year! We offered to host at our house since a few people still hadn't seen our house yet. We did some decorating (just some Christmas lights inside our house and a few other random items), and we had Mexican food (that seemed appropriate for the July part of Christmas in July). I meant to take some pictures of the festivities, but I was having too much fun and totally forgot! Luckily Timmy had organized one group picture, so I have that! That's about it though... 

Mike and Leslie Sprandio are on the left, then Fro is holding the duck (McGee's dad made that duck!), and Juliff is right behind her... then me and McGee... and Timmy is in front of us. Ashley (Juliff's fiance) is next to Timmy in the red hat, and Big Mike is behind Ashley, and that's Big Mike's girlfriend (Jen) between him and McGee! 

In somewhat related news, we made some MAJOR progress on our downstairs bathroom!  McGee did a lot of work on it while I was in CA, and we worked on it the week leading up to our Christmas party too. We wanted to have it in working order in time for the party! We still have a bit more work to do, but a lot of the major stuff is done. All we have left is some caulking, some paint touch-ups, and of course we have to put up our ceiling. Oh, and paint the door (it was painted green by the previous owners). I'm REALLY happy with how it has been coming together though!!  I'll show you two "Before" pictures again, just in case you forgot: 

Before!

Before!

And now here are a bunch of how it looks now!: 

It's definitely a tiny powder room, but it's functional now!  Oh and I found a small metal piece of art for above the towel bar, but it hasn't arrived yet. 

You can see most of the bathroom in this one... 

There's still a glare, but I tried to get a clearer picture! We cheated a tiny bit because we haven't actually been to Rocky Mountain National Park yet, but we'll be there in September!  So, close enough, right? We thought the colors worked so perfectly with our dusty blue wall color. 

Last night we had a visitor in our yard, and I was actually able to take a picture!! We get a lot of deer roaming through our yard, but they're usually too skittish and run away long before I can even contemplate getting a picture. This one was just chilling, though!  At one point it stood up to stare at us (we even had Guinness with us), but it never ran away.  Shortly after it stood up, we quietly and slowly went back inside the house so it would feel free to calm down and lay back down. 

There she is! 

She's so cute! She's just chilling. 

This was after we'd been standing out there for a few minutes... She got nervous and started to stand up.

And here she is standing up! We went inside shortly after this so that she wouldn't be nervous anymore.

This weekend we have a Surprise Party to attend for our friend Juliff. It's a pool party, and I kinda hate pool parties... but hopefully it'll be fun. Juliff's mom is organizing it, and it's at Juliff's sister's house which is about an hour away. The bummer part is that it is supposed to be really hot this weekend! The temperatures are supposed to get right up to 100 degrees, plus some crazy humidity (and the humidity always makes it feel worse). Keep your fingers crossed for us that we don't pass out or overheat or anything! Haha :)  And we don't really have any other plans for the weekend, except maybe going to see the new Star Trek. I think all activities aside from the surprise party will be indoor activities with lots of air conditioning!

I hope everything is going really great for all of you!!

California!

My trip to California was amazing, as always. It always flies by, and it's always so hard to leave!

The day I arrived, we went right to Oakdale to have some family time! My parents, Brad, Amanda, my nieces, and me all enjoyed our time there. My nieces loved the inflatable pool, and we all loved relaxing and hanging out!  And my parents are officially buying the ranch, which is such amazing news!!  We're SO happy it's all working out!

Here's my parents' sweet dog Maggie on the ride to the ranch! She looooves the ranch.

The girls in the pool!! 

Our July 4th, we had a BBQ at my brother's house!  My Uncle Jim and Aunt Rhoda came over too, and so did my brother's friend Erik and his wife and their new baby. We had a great time hanging out and eating BBQ (and homemade ice cream!!), and after it started to get dark we had a blast watching my brother light some fireworks!!  The best firework (with the best name EVER) was Tiger Fury!!

Here's my dad, mom, Addison, Aunt Rhoda, and Uncle Jim! 

Here's Brad instructing the girls on where to throw the little popper fireworks. I'm not sure what you call them, but they're tiny and they snap when they hit the ground. 

Cassidy had a blast throwing the little popper fireworks at the ground! Addison didn't like it as much.

It said on the directions of this one to hold it! We all took turns reading the directions because it didn't seem like that could be right, but Brad was brave and did it! He looks like the Statue of Liberty (except he's a dude, of course).

The best firework ever!! I loved the name of it, and then when it was lit it was even better than I was hoping it would be! 

I had a blast during the week hanging out with my family, and I also got to spend some good hangout time with Lizzy and Claighton, Adriana, and my Uncle Jim!! I didn't take a picture when I was hanging out with Adriana or my Uncle Jim, but I got a good one of Lizzy and Claighton! 

I had so much fun hanging out with them!!  Though it would've been better if I'd won at least one game of dominoes... Haha :)  

My brother and I took the girls to the Sacramento Zoo on the Friday before I left, and it was so much fun!  It'd been awhile since I'd been there. Addison is really funny though and after about 30 seconds at an animal exhibit she's ready to move on to the next one! We made it through that entire zoo within about an hour and half. Haha :)

Cassidy and Addison totally overpowering this crocodile.

Cassidy and Addison! 

An adorable giraffe! 

An action shot of the little baby giraffe running towards the food! 

Both girls were super brave and loved petting this boa constrictor!  I thought one of them might freak out, but nope!!  They both loved it and kept petting it. 

They're both roaring! 

 And on Saturday (the day before I left) my parents and I went to the State Fair!!  It had been MANY years since I'd been to the State Fair (I want to say my last time was right after high school?  Can that be right?), and it was so much fun.  The livestock area is usually a lot of fun, but this year it felt really hectic in that area! We didn't stay long in that section. I loved all of the County Exhibits though! We spent a lot of time exploring that area.

Adorable! 

This was a donkey that loved rolling around on his back! I think he had an itch or something. It reminded me of Guinness when he wants belly rubs though! 

This lady at the Stanislaus exhibit told us to sit down at their photo op and she'd take a picture for us! It was a bench in front of a big mailbox... 

I don't remember which one this was... Maybe Placer County? 

Calaveras County! I thought this one was impressive.

Bishop, CA!  I grabbed a few souvenir pencils from this one. 

Our lunch! It was fruit, cheese, bread, and wine slushies!!  Mine was a strawberry zinfandel, and it was SO refreshing and delicious. 

A huge octopus that I thought was cool! 

Kevin was QUITE busy while I was in CA, and I have some amazing home project progress to show you!!  I'll do another post soon about that. And this weekend we are having a Christmas Party at our house!!  Yes, a Christmas Party.  And we're decorating and everything. I'll take some pictures of that too :)  I hope everything is going great for everyone!!