The Real Beginning of Summer

For a lot of people, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer. It's a great time for that first barbecue or first trip to the beach. 

Or for that first summer cocktail!

For years, my family has been coming up to the delta on Memorial Day weekend to kick off the summer. My parents have a little vacation house right next door to our close family friends, and we spend the days water skiing, wake boarding, chatting, rafting, drinking, eating, and relaxing. Since Terry and I live in LA now, we aren't able to come up to the delta as often as we'd like, but we try to make it happen at least a few times every year. 

This time around, I'm up here with my parents, my brother and his fiancee, my parents' friends Dan and Diane, and their son Matt and his girlfriend Amy. This morning, I led a boot camp for everyone that looked a little something like this:

We ended up skipping the 45-second round, because we all felt pretty exhausted. I really liked the combination of exercises, though, and my heart rate was through the roof from all the jumping. I will certainly be trying this exercise again in its entirety, even though I got a great sweat from just the 20-minute version!

And of course after the boot camp we had to do a photo shoot where everyone chose a favorite workout pose.

Please excuse Tango's booty

I love Dan's Warrior 3 pose here

Amy didn't get the memo we were taking a picture, and Mom jumped too late

And of course my brother's "star fish" jump is amazing

So that's the group I'm working with here. It went extremely well. By the way, these four photos were shot by my friend-basically-brother-because-we-grew-up-together-since-age-5 Matt. He's an incredible photographer, writer, and all-around Renaissance man. You can check out more of his amazing shots here.

There's much more to fill you in on about our weekend here, but it's late and I have much to look forward to tomorrow: apparently frolicking will be involved. I don't know yet what that means, but I'll be sure to let you know!