Pics from this summer.

So this summer was generally a more relaxed, more work oriented summer... The pics I'm putting up in this first blog are only through June I believe.

First, Dougie-fresh and myself. This was taken at Calvary Chapel Living Water by Tommy while he was in town. Doug and I have both been praying about going back to Okinawa ever since we left. It looks like I'll be going out this semester, but the Lord has other plans for Doug and he might be heading out to Oki for the spring semester.

Here's a pic (below) of the family (except Adam) dressed up for a 50's themed Birthday party for a family friend who was, coincidentally, turning 50. Fun stuff. Even though everyone was told to come dressed up, we were just about the only one's dressed up... : ) This summer I spent much more time with my family than I have in previous summers.

Here's our first litter of puppies all grown up. They're 1/2 poodle, 1/2 maltise (maltipoo's). The one on the left is Ciesel, the one on the right is Sandy. They were our first puppies and definetely a load of fun to be around. I think the puppies made me appreciate much more the innocent things in life.

To the right is my Dad driving our boat on lake San Antonio near San Luis Obispo. We spent a week in central California just boating and relaxing with a close group of family friends.

While we were on vacation, we had the opportunity of learning about our white-man heritage. : D Here are the guys all lined up shooting clay pigeons off the back deck with 12-gauge shotguns. This was the first time Adam and I ever fired a shotgun, so it was both exciting as well as a learning experience in the power of guns.

A friend fixed up our jet-ski's and for the first time in 7 years we were able to take them out on the water. These things were a blast! At first it was really hard to balance it in the midst of all the boat wake, but soon we learned about standing on the sides of the jet-ski, (as Adam is doing in the picture) which gave us far more stability. With the jet-ski stable, the fun really began. After the week, there weren't any serious injuries and only a few bumps and bruises.

While we were heading back home on Sunday, there was a fire just off Interstate 5, so we tried to find an alternative route through the hills coming in to L.A. When we had been driving on the freeway, Aariel saw signs about a Lake Pyramid approaching, and although she kept asking and persisting that we stop off and take our boat out one more time, my Dad just wanted to get home. Well, it turned out that the side road we tried to shortcut the freeway with led right to Lake Pyramid, so we ended up cruising around for a couple hours. It was a really nice vacation and I especially enjoyed the fellowship with brothers and sisters I don't get to see very much. It was a little crazy at times with all those people staying in that one house, but the Lord gave us patience. : )

*That's the limit on pictures for now, so look forward to the next post recapping my work life and other times of summer.. : )