Another busy/great weekend!

I think my job is turning us into weekend warriors! With the marathon training and other stuff to do during the week, we are finding the only time to pack in everything we want with our friends is the weekend. This makes for very tiring, but really awesome weekends.

We had the pleasure of having our friends from Arizona stay at our home from Wednesday through Saturday. They went to the beach one day and the Wild Animal Park another day, so mostly we got to hang out with them in the evenings.

They added an amazing amount of life to our home. It was an adventure having 8 people here!

Our friends have four kids aged 16, 7, and two 5 year old twins. Out of respect for their feelings on internet privacy, I will not use their names. But it was fun taking family photos of them in Coronado on Friday. I'll let Jenetta show the pretty finished images. Here is what most of it looked like from my perspective :)


Seriously, it was so much fun to have them with us! I think it confirmed to us even more that we are very ready to interact with children of our own. The energy/joy/craziness/drama started from the moment they got up until the time the kids went to bed and their parents could take a deep breath and just chat with us. It was good. It made me wish they lived in SD.


Then on Saturday morning, we went to Temecula to watch Jake Pavlovics ride in a bike race up there. Jake is a strong competitor and he really enjoys racing!

It has been a while since we have supported the Pav kids in something extra-curricular. I remember going to the boy's basketball games at the Westwood club years ago. We miss spending time with them the way we used to so frequently, but it makes the times together now more special. Here a few pictures of the morning with them:


Then we got a call from our AZ friends who were heading back home. We met up with them in the old part of Temecula and we attended the "Rod Race" which was basically like Escondido's Crusin' Grand, but much larger. It was packed with people there to see the restored cars. My shoulders ached from all the piggy back rides with the kids :)

As we ate lunch at one of the restaurants there, a really terrible band took to a nearby stage and started their set. They played "Suzy Q," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (the GnR version), "Tell Me All Your Thoughts on God" by Dishwalla, and "Shine" by Collective Soul while we were sitting there. It was like they couldn't figure out what kind of cover band they were as every song (regardless of decade) was laced with mind-bending 1980's hair metal guitar solos. But it made for a funny lunch. Here is a video of the girls rocking out:

Then we checked out some more cars and said goodbye to our friends. We hope to be able to visit with them again very soon.

Then we drove back home, I ran 14 miles in 2 hrs. 21 min, and got cleaned up before heading over to Blake Gallion's 30th birthday party. Here is Blake serving his massive Claim Jumper birthday cake:


It was great to be able to hang with most of our friends over a great dinner and to meet Blake and Rachael's family.

We are so blessed to have so many great friends!


Sunday has been busy - but not quite so fully packed. I played guitar for three services at church. My friend Geoff was the guest speaker, and I really enjoyed what he had to say. Geoff is a real student of history and his contextual understanding of the scriptures is so helpful as he teaches. Later, we went to Chipotle with friends after church for lunch.

Then I came home and took a nap! It was very necessary!

Now we are headed out for some shopping and we will probably recover with a quiet evening at home before next week starts another crazy, busy week at work.