For Peggie's 70th birthday, Papa J had a connection and was able to make her a hair appointment with a fancy celebrity hair stylist near Hollywood. He wanted Amanda and I to take her up to LA and make a girls' day of it. It was all his treat! We started with brunch at Fig Tree in Venice. 

The restaurant was darling and right on the beach. 

The food there was SO good! I think it was the best breakfast burrito I've ever had! 

After a long leisurely brunch, we headed over to the Getty Center. Peggie loves art museums so I knew it would be the perfect place to take her.

The views were gorgeous from the Getty.

We got to see Renoirs, Manets, Monets, Van Gogh's Irises, and so many others.

The gardens outside were beautiful as well.

Unfortunately, while we were at the Getty, Peggie got a message that her hairstylist had a family emergency and had to cancel. It was definitely a bummer, but we were having such a great time, we weren't too disappointed. It just meant we had more time for dinner! Amanda found another place close to the water, this time in Huntington Beach.

We were still pretty full from earlier, so we just shared some appetizers, had drinks, and then a tray of homemade donuts for dessert. It was all delicious! 

Despite the cancelled hair cut, it was still a wonderful girls' day in LA!

 We are more than halfway through summer, so I thought I would share a little bit about what we've been up to.

The kids have all spent some time reading. For the most part, they have been rereading old favorites.

Ellie has been on a swim team since Covid, but Hannah stopped during the past school year. For the summer, I signed up Hannah, and they've been going with our neighbor Chloe.

Hannah loves having lazy mornings where she sleeps in and then reads in bed for a while. As you can see, the kittens love it as well.

The boys were at a water polo tournament (Joey did club water polo this summer with his old Double Peak friends) so the girls and I took advantage of our girls' day and went to a restaurant that the boys don't like.

Celebrating our favorite dad on Father's Day. 

Our other two favorite dads were out of town that day, so Andy got the whole day to himself.

Ellie has randomly gotten into a Starbucks kick lately, which is funny since Andy and I don't even like coffee. She always gets caramel frappuccinos. For her birthday, the gift she wanted from us was a Starbucks gift card. She usually likes to walk down to the Starbucks near our house, but this time she grabbed a drink while we were shopping at Target.

Andy and I celebrated 20 years of marriage this June! 

We had all sorts of plans to celebrate our big anniversary, but they fell through. Honestly, I was very happy just going out to dinner with this great guy!

A FroYo Love date with our 91-year old friend Louise.

One of our new favorite summer treats is making meringues. 

We serve them with vanilla ice cream and a mixed berry sauce. SO good!

Hannah has lots of fun, relaxing activities that she especially likes to do during the summer when she has plenty of time...

Abigail, Hannah and Ellie all made this salted caramel chocolate cake. It turned out so well!

I got a new desk as an early birthday present. All of the money spent on Joey's Lego sets over the years paid off. He basically built the whole thing!

Andy's parents got back into town at the beginning of July. Andy and I took them out to dinner for his mom's belated birthday and a belated Father's Day.

Joey has been doing some "knees over toes" exercises this summer to strengthen his legs for basketball. Ellie sometimes helps him out.

Somehow the kids always end up reading our old blog books during the summer. They always enjoy reading stories from their childhood.

The kittens are six months now, so I thought I would share an update. Really, it's just an excuse to post all of the cute pictures of them  that we've taken. You'll see that they are especially cute when they sleep, so we have a LOT of sleeping kitten pictures...

Some kids were playing Huckleberry, and Milo was VERY interested. He kept trying to bat the moving things on the screen.

When our neighbor, who has two cats of her own, found out that we got two kittens, she sent us a package from Chewy filled with food, toys and treats. It was so sweet. The kittens love this spinning ball toy.

George and Milo are very intrigued by our back yard even though they aren't allowed outside. We have been training them not to go outside even if the door is wide open, but one time Milo pushed out the bottom of the screen and escaped outside. He was hanging out in the bushes up on our hill when Hannah noticed him out the window. Thankfully, the cats LOVE their treats, so as soon as we shook the treat bag he can right back inside.

They are definitely still kittens so they love to get into everything. That can be a little problematic sometimes, but they are cute enough that they are worth the trouble.

If you are crouched or bending over, chances are you'll end up with a cat perched on your back!

George and Milo like when we have our family cleaning days because they think the stacked chairs are fun to climb around on. It's like a temporary cat tower every Saturday.

For some reason, George in particular really loves to be inside my purse.

I got a new desk, and I was in the process of moving all my stuff from the old desk to the new desk. The kittens messed up all of my piles of stuff, and then fell asleep on their handiwork.

They slept as I slowly put everything away around them. I felt like I was playing that old kid's game "Pick Up Sticks," where I was trying to get things off my desk without disturbing them just because they were so cute.

George and Milo haven't figured out that they are getting too big to sleep on this thing together...

but they keep trying!