A visit from the STEVENS!

My kids had been counting down for MONTHS in their excitement to have cute cousins- Lizzy, Julie and baby Penny in town for a visit. Well, the day finally arrived and lived up to everyone's expectations!  Nancy and Herb were gracious enough to host our two families at their home for the day--- and more importantly, heat their pool for swimming!  The entire weekend was a bit chilly (darn it) and probably not the best swimming weather.  That combined with the fact that our neighborhood pool was closed for servicing-- made for quite the bummer! We know that our cousins love to swim when they visit us in Cali.  So,  we were very very grateful to the Marstons for offering up their home and then heating up their pool to 89 degrees for comfortable swimming!  It was a fun start to our weekend together:)  Penny napped and everyone else swam and ate and spent time catching up. Even Troy came over to hang out.  Loved every minute.

In fact, for most of our weekend together, we just relaxed and talked!  It never happens that we have so much time to catch up and we definitely took advantage of it all.  The kids played and the adults chatted.  So fun to see baby Penny who had grown a TON and was the apple of Evelyn's eye.  So cute to watch Lizzy and Julie with Dane and Grant.  They all slept in one room and it was quite the fiasco come bedtime!  But when do they ever have that opportunity to stay up late and have a slumber party with their cousins-it was fun times.  On their last day in town (Memorial Day) we enjoyed Del Mar beach... running from waves, collecting seashells, etc.  Penny was a big fan of the ocean.  It went by way too quickly, but truly a blast from start to finish.  Now the kids and I are looking forward to a fun summer vacation to Seattle next month!

 Dave and Jen bought Evelyn a balloon animal making kit! They know her well.  She quickly learned how to construct animals and had a blast putting them together for her bros and sis:)