My Sister's Keeper and Group Hike

Friday night I wanted to see "My Sister's Keeper" so I invited a couple friends to meet me at AMC. One of my friends has a parent that has cancer, but she came anyway (the movie is about a girl who fights for medical emancipation because she was genetically created to provide bone marrow, etc, to help her leukemic sister). All 6 of us were in tears and I couldn't for the life of me find my tissues!

A couple of the girls had to leave early, but four of us went to Islands for drinks and appetizers. We had a fun time catching up. My friend, Angie and I ended up talking and catching up after Lisa and Nicole went home. I had a fun time, tears and all!

From left to right: Nicole, Kristen, Helen, and Lisa:

Saturday morning, I met with a group called Christians Hiking for the Lord at Del Cerro Park for a local hike. Nicole and Lisa had decided to go so I picked them up and we went together. I had forwarded the invite to our BASIC email listing and we had several people come! Also, my friends, Deanne (along with her dog and her friend's dog) and Tania came. The weather was pretty hot, so it is sort of understandable that the hike was short, but I was hoping we would have gone farther along the trail. I'm going to have to organize another group that might want to have more of a work out.

Actually, Tania is planning on doing a 3-day hike in Peru on the Inca trails to Manchu Picchu at the end of August with my other friend, Colleen. I think they may want to do the hike a few times before they go because it is a tough hike and you really should get conditioned.
Nicole and I snuck away from the group to start hiking again because there was a lot of waiting on this hike and we wanted to actually hike!

Instead of going back on the main hiking trail, I suggested a different trail to Jon Flickinger, the group's leader, so that's what we did. It's a little bit steeper, but everyone seemed to handle it well.

Nicole and Lisa take in the beautiful view. That's Catalina Island in the background.
After the hike we went to Ruby's Diner for lunch.

At church that night, Nicole's parents, Ron and Nancy, were celebrating their 45th anniversary. In honor of that, they brought 4 cakes (one for each section of the church) to have after the service. Here they are cutting one of them for a photo op: