Lady, Branoon, The Bubbush, and Boy: May 2008

This past weekend, Brandon, Elly and I headed down to the L.A. area for a nice getaway with our good friends, The Greens. They have a little girl only two months younger than Elly and the only time we've seen her is when she was three weeks old. We had to get the two girls together again for some bonding...and the parents really wanted some catch-up time also. It was so much fun. It was the perfect location, too. It took each of us about three hours to drive there. The Greens live in Las Vegas, so we met in the middle! L.A. had it's hottest weekend of the year so far, but mostly we were able to stay out of the heat, thanks to the beautiful resort where we stayed.

Actually, it's my cousin's house and it's amazing! They are always so generous in letting us stay there whenever we need it. Here are a few shots I took of the house; I couldn't resist, it's just so beautiful.

On Friday evening we had a nice dinner at a cute Mexican place. Then, we put the little girls to bed and talked until all hours of the night, reminiscing and so forth. Brandon and I both met Brian while serving our missions in Romania. He married Chailyn when he got home and the four of us have been close ever since. Finally, when I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, and I was sure that it was 2:30 or 3 in the morning, I got up to get a drink of water and the clock said 12:30. I guess I'm getting old when I think 12:30 feels like 3 in the morning.

On Saturday, we took the girls to the Los Angeles Zoo. This was a mistake. Although we did enjoy seeing the animals who weren't seeking shelter inside from the 100 degree heat, we did not realize that the zoo is set on a hill. Much like they put the milk at the back of the grocery store so that you have to walk through the whole thing to get some, the zoo people cleverly put the most attractive animals at the top of this hill. The lions, tigers and bears were a long, hot, sweaty walk away from the entrance. We did not realize this when we began our trek and I think we stopped for ICEEs much too near the beginning. We forced fluids down our girls' throats and sequestered them to the shaded strollers for 97% of the time we were there, but when they did get out, they were delighted to see the animals.

Here they are looking at the Gorillas...look at their poor little red faces.

We promptly went back to the house for some much needed swim time. Both girls liked swimming, but not as much as their dads liked playing with the many pool floaties/underwater skateboard type things. The majority of their time was spent seeing who could jump from the side onto a floating toy and stay up the longest slash replicate the pose of the guy on the underwater skateboard the best.

I think my favorite part of the weekend was lying on the hammock on the back patio with Elly on a beautiful night, watching Brandon and Brian play ping pong under the pergola which was covered with a beautiful climbing flower that looked like this:

The girls loved playing together and they got along really well. Both are very easy going and most excitement I think we had with them was when Elly decided to chase Ava around the room on her hands and knees. Ava is head and shoulders a better crawler than Elly (seeing as how Elly skipped crawling altogether) and she took off and left Elly in the dust. But, only a few yards away she would turn around and wait for Elly to get closer, before taking off again. After only a few minutes, Elly figured out that walking would be much faster and stood up. Still, Ava was pretty darn fast.

They really had a good time and gave each other lots of hugs and kisses when they said goodbye. We wish we lived closer to them so we could see them more often. Thanks for an awesome weekend. We love you guys!