the simple life.: Our Familia

It's not every day our relatives from Mexico come and visit us Californians.

It's actually not every year or even half a decade that we get to see them.

So you can imagine our excitement that my uncle Javier {my mom's brother}

& his whole family came to visit! That's huge.

The reason why they drove the 20+ hours from Juarez, Mexico,

is this little lady on the right:

Karent.

Short story, instead of the traditional,

big Quinceanera party us Mexicans usually have when we turn 15,

Karent wanted to come to California and study English.

For a year.

In high school.

For a year.

Away from her friends and family.

FOR.

YEAR.

I am so impressed with this girl.

And we're SO excited to have her here!!!!

She is so sweet and funny and I know
that she is going to have an incredible experience being here.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll have other ops to blog about her later because if I didn't mention it before, she'll be here a year. {I guess I'm just so blown away by her maturity and courage because I would not have been capable of making a decision like that on my own when I was 15. "Oh, no, mom, I don't want an expensive, fun party with food, dancing, and friends and an excuse to wear a ridiculously pretty white dress and tiara--I want to move a thousand miles away for a year for my Sophomore year in high school." Except she said it in Spanish. Wow.}

So her family brought her here and stayed only a few days, but it was a great few days.

The Aceves' are hilarious!

Nitza with my bro Charlie

My uncle is an incredibly funny guy, and his three beautiful daughters are definitely their father's daughters.

Sofia.

We played Golf one night, a game played with SkipBo cards, and it took forever because we had so many players, but it was an epic game, which Franco won of course...