Summer?

This summer has been a strange one.  Not like a real summer at all.  

The sun has been rather stingy with it's warmth.  The majority of the summer has been cloudy, with a few teaser days of sunshine in between.  I guess it's better than the 100º+ summer days I grew up with, but still, just doesn't feel like summer.  We've been waiting for the warmth to hit... through June... and July... and now it's halfway through August, and summer is over.  Supposedly we'll have a "really nice September," but we'll see.  I'm skeptical.

Anyways, this summer is also weird because Kirk and I are watching our siblings and others pack up and head back to Provo for fall.  And we're not going.  We're are both ecstatic to not go back to papers and tests and homework and a Utah winter, but (not surprisingly) I'm a little nostalgic for Provo.  The new books, new classes, and new semester.  Yes, I am a dork.  We know this already.  With that said, I am still very happy that we are staying put here in California.  And very much looking forward to enjoying California during fall and winter, which we've very much missed.  (Kirk is especially looking forward to not going back to surfing Utah lake.)

Anyways, as the summer months wind down, here are a few random pictures to remind me that we did, actually, have a summer this year.  

Kirk surfed in a fun local surf contest at the beginning of summer, held in memorial for a friend from high school.  

He also tried his hand at modeling, hoping to relive his YM days.... 

This is us, sitting in the lovely Miami airport, after getting up at 4 just to catch a flight from New Orleans to Miami in order to get on our flight from Miami to Costa Rica, only to find out that the flight to Costa Rica had been cancelled for no particular reason.  And we would have to stay in Miami for an entire day.  I look cute, right??

In Costa Rica.  Much happier.  And no, I did not do my hair or make-up that entire trip, hence the sunglasses.  

At dinner one night in Costa Rica.  Yummy yummy sushi at a restaurant on the top floor of one of the buildings in Tamarindo.  However, not to be confused with the other sushi place way down the street that also happened to be a discoteca.  No, thank you.

We also had some cute house guests a couple of times.  Above, resident mermaid Cadence, showing off her seaweed jewelry that her uncle Kirk so kindly made for her.  We think Kirk has a future in seaweed jewelry.

And Maya came, too.  Chillin', workin' on her tan like the other chicks on the beach.

And for my birthday, we drove down to San Diego and rode our bikes around Coronado.

Where Kirk tried...

several times to get a picture of both of us riding our bikes.  

There, we go.  Kind of.  

It was fun. (Like my new bike?  I heart it.)

Despite my whining about the weather, it has been a great summer.  Close to family, friends, and the beach, what more could we ask for?