Saint Forgiving

When I was on my mission, at one point we did a district meeting in English as opposed to Spanish. If you said a word of Spanish, you had to start over. It was much tougher than it sounds after a year of trying to speak Spanish and translating certain missionary words I had never used in English. We also translated the names of towns. San Francisco-Saint Frank, San Isidro-Saint Izzy/Ozzy, Zapote-Sapote (it's a fruit). A couple weeks ago we spent some time in Saint Forgiving, or San Clemente for those of you that hablar.
My mom's family has been going to San Clemente since she was a little girl. I won't reveal her age, but let's say it's been a while. Every year we go to the San Clemente Inn for a week. It's a pretty complex ritual. You wake up, saunter down to the beach, and stay until you want to go home. At the beach you can go in the water, take a nap, or hang out. It's a very taxing day. Usually for lunch you either get pizza or go to Pedro's Tacos. Pedro's Tacos is to fish tacos what MJ is to basketball. Everybody wants to be like Mike, but there's only one. After your rough day at the beach, each family cooks one night and they you hang out at the pool or hang out until the older generation kicks you out so they can play their card game. It's kind of like sitting at the adult's table at Thanksgiving. I still sit at the kid's table. But we have way more fun.
Anyway, that's a typical day at in San Clemente. Every now and then we mix it up by going to the pool before the beach, play shuffleboard before dinner, or hang out in the morning and don't go to the beach until the afternoon. I think you get the idea.
This year we went for the first weekend and then went back Thursday night through Saturday. I'll run through some of the highlights of this year. One night we went night swimming and out of nowhere this dude attacked us. We were standing there minding our own business, and he just jumps at us, casually mentions what he would like to do to us, and swings. My cousin Matt ran off like a little school girl. My other cousin Richard took him down and the rest of us were about to open up a can on him before his friends ran over and stopped us because he was drunk. Like that was an excuse to act like a moron. If you attack a group of seven duded (well, six because Matt ran off) you deserve what you have coming. That was exciting. Matt, after recovering his dignity, also got his mission call to the Brazil Florianopolis. Apparently the surfing and beaches are awesome. Other than that we had some huge waves on the last couple of days due to some storm way off the coast.

Here's Matt (in the front) acting tough. Too bad we know better. The real men are in the back.

Tamara with Jane making her cameo in the hundreds of pictures she takes.

The little kids table.
If Pedro's Taco is closed, there's always an Eric sandwich!
Here's Grandi. This whole event is thanks to her.