Lots of Fun Visitors

Jeff and Kelli visiting
(The above pictures were taken with Kelli's camera...thus the reason the color and lighting look awesome!  I wish I could just pick her brain for hours about photography.  She truly is so talented!)

I know I've said this time and again, but I LOVE where we live.

I love that it is full of such diverse beauty and so close to San Francisco that it makes for a great location for people to come and visit.  It's been so fun throughout the past four and a half years that we've lived here to be able to see friends and family traveling through the area.  We've loved the opportunity to open up our home (Hotel California really does exist) and have people stay with us, show them around the area, and/or go out to dinner and catch up.

Summer is always a great time for people to come visit.

The weather is beautiful, school is out, and schedules are a bit more relaxed than in the Fall/Winter.  At the end of last month we were excited to be able to invite Jeff and Kelli over to our house for Sunday night dinner.  They are both good friends of Dallas from his college years back in Provo, UT.  Kelli is an incredible photographer and travels all over the world doing service work, but she calls Houston her home.  Jeff lives in the San Jose area, which is only about an hour south of us, but sadly we rarely get to see him.  He's an accountant like Dallas, so they both keep insane work schedules.  We were excited when Jeff called letting us know that Kelli was going to be in town for a quick weekend trip to visit family and photograph a session out at Lake Tahoe.  We figured it would be perfect to have everyone over to our place for dinner.  We love Kelli and Jeff so much and had so much fun hearing about what they've been up to.  I'm sure Kelli was sick of me asking different photography questions by the end of the night.  It was so great to see them and catch up...we only wish it was longer!

The very next day our cousins came into town for the week.
Kevin and Amber are on the Perkins side of the family and I hadn't had the opportunity of meeting them yet (well technically, I met Kevin at our wedding, but I don't remember anything from that day, so it doesn't count!)  They had contacted us a few days prior letting us know they were coming to the bay area for a visit and was wondering if they could crash at our place since their previous arrangements had fallen through.  We were so excited for the chance to have family stay with us and get to know our cousins better.
We had so much fun with them!  They had a packed schedule of sight-seeing planned throughout all of the greater bay area, so we mostly saw them at evening times when they would get back from their adventures.  It was great to get to know them better.  They are such sweethearts.  The last night that they were in town we all went out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory.  Daxton did pretty well til the end when he got hungry.  We loved having them visit and hope they'll come back soon!