Summer is over...

... or at least for all the school kids in Albuquerque. July was very busy, with travel and extra-curricular activities, so to get in enough hours was tough. After the Spokane trip, the following weekend the girls and I went to San Jose and visited my brother Keith's family and I went to a friend's wedding. This was a friend I had worked with at Washington Group (Steve Pham). Since he's Vietnamese and his wife is Chinese I felt very "white". The kids had a great time "hanging out" with their cousins (whom they have been getting very close to through instant messaging this summer). The cousins had a swim meet and a vacation they were getting ready for, so the weekend was very relaxing.

The next weekend Mike went to Alaska fishing. The trip turned out to be sort of a bust as most years the King Salmon limit on the Kenai river is 6 per day, but the run was so small this year that it was 3.. Then the day they arrived it went to 1, so twenty minutes later, when Mike caught his one.... Well, finally the next day they closed the season all together, so Mike got to catch one Salmon! The next few days they did some Deep Sea Halibut fishing, which Mike found interesting but requiring more muscle than skill. All in all he was not thrilled with the trip but it was beautiful and restful.

While he was Alaska, the girls went for a daylong trail ride on the horses while I sat in the car and worked. They had a great ride to Bailey Lake. That is beautiful too. Mike and I will have to go this fall.

In the last few days of July, I was not doing anything but work, the girls were sewing, sleeping, riding, and relaxing. If I was awake, I was trying to get billable hours in. But now it is August (the month starts fresh!).. I dropped the girls at the airport Thursday to go back to Albuquerque since school starts next week for them. Then I took off to work a few days in Boise (through the weekend.. again BILLABLE HOURS!) and next week I'm going to a conference in Las Vegas.