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One of the highlights of June is celebrating Father's Day and we are so lucky to have many great fathers to celebrate including Chris. Ellie had a rare moment of singing for the camera and this one needs to be saved for the ages: We sure love our Ellie Boo! She smooths out our rough edges with her feminine charm, effusive praise, and sweet kisses. She makes the funniest face when we ask her to "smile for the camera." There's nothing like a fast scoot around the backyard to bring out the natural smile; our Japanese Lantern tree was in full bloom and she kept coming in with her hair covered with yellow flowers as she scooted under it. It was a lovely combination with those golden curls!

It was lovely to come back to Los Angeles and find our house in order and our children still alive. They had a great time with Uncle Matt and it we really appreciated his willingness to help. I don't think the kids missed us too much either. Matt spoiled them with trips to the Lego Store, eating out at their favorite places, swimming at the pool, and playing video games. Fortunately Matt didn't have to rush home as soon as we got back and we were able to spend a little more time with him before he left. Matt served his mission in our area and so coming back to visit has added bonus. We planned a day trip to Monterey and Carmel-by-the-sea to check out some of his favorites. Our first stop was at a chocolate factory called Lula's. Matt's roommate's family owned the factory and we got a special tour of it including many delicious samples. The kids (and adults) were delighted to say the least. After chocolate we had pizza at Pizza My Heart and then checked out Can...

It's no secret I adore Chris. What's not to adore? He's handsome, charming, funny, brilliant, honorable, trustworthy, hardworking, dedicated, and a lot of other things that probably aren't appropriate to write. The first fifteen years of our marriage have been amazing and I consider myself extremely lucky to have experienced them. We celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary in May but given that it was at the beginning of what my friends call "the month of 'may-hem'" we decided to postpone an outing together for when we would have less on our calendars (though June wasn't much better). On the actual anniversary day, after attending a cub scout picnic and putting the kids to bed, I made some fancy snacks and we watched a movie. In some ways it seemed an accurate way to celebrate fifteen years together. Somehow we managed to convince Uncle Matt to fly to California and watch the kids for two nights in June so that Chris and I could escape t...