I have to backtrack a little here, as I forgot to include some great photos of the camping trip the night before the wedding. Soop, Steve and I took a short walk down the river in the early morning and much to our surprise Soopy found a little water snake tucked up against the rock in a small pool of water. He’s hard to see, but Steve got a great shot. It was cool out, with grey cloud cover which Soop said was unusual for this time of year. The low water and the wide, smooth rocks sitting out in the little sun there was that morning, reminded me of being a kid and sunning myself on those same kinds of rocks with my sister in the summers. That was one of my favorite parts of being up in the mountains: the cold water and those hot, hot rocks to warm back up on.

Okay, back to the wedding. So we partied on down the night of Robyn and Steve’s wedding. This of course included a couple of shots of tequila (or if you’re reporting to gramma Sunny) those were glasses of, um, water.

The cousins managed to stay up fairly well into the wee hours – and we even persuaded The Bride to stay up with us!

Travis danced just about every woman in the room – thanks Travis! -- and I even got to dance with the bride, though there’re no pictures to prove it.

The next morning was easier on the mid-generation than I expected it to be. We gathered out front of Dave and Liz’s cabin for this year’s group photo. We had all of the cousins with us, and all of their children. When we got back to Bonnie and Bill’s, Bonnie dug out some old pictures of the family in the same parking lot. This one’s from 1982!

Although we were all standing for the 9:00 a.m. photo shoot, we were nonetheless feeling the effects of the night before, so we walked across the parking lot to the lodge for breakfast. We took over the patio (there were probably 15 or so of us) and had ourselves some burritos, eggs, bagels, juice and coffee. The sun was out and it was warm enough for Jocelyn to take of her sweaters and sit there in jeans and a tank top. Bliss.

We took off around noon to head out to my Dad’s house, leaving Ryan and Cory and the other cousins with a little seed planted in their heads about a cousin get away in the next year. As of a couple of days ago, Ryan and Cory reported back with good news about San Jose del Cabo – looks like we might actually make this happen!

The drive from Bear Valley to Tuolumne is just gorgeous and not very long, even if you do miss the exit that didn’t used to be there! The hills are golden and the oak trees drape their limbs over the cows and horses. The wind is hot and the sun is thin and light and low. There is nothing more beautiful to me than Northern California late summer sunshine (I think we’ve been over this before). We drove about 10 minutes too far before we both realized we were not going to Dad’s anymore. We doubled back and figured it out, arriving with plenty of time to enjoy the late afternoon views out over the foothills.

We only visited with Dad and Greta for a couple of days, but on Monday we decided we needed to get out into the country and spend some time enjoying the sun and great weather, so we took a fancy picnic out to the river. We spent the better part of the afternoon there, sunning ourselves, eating, and playing games.

Tuesday morning, our eighth anniversary, we drove on back down to Steve’s parent’s place in Carmel. After much debate, we decided on dinner at one of our favorite spots in Monterrey, Passionfish. We had a lovely meal with Bonnie and Bill full of treats like lamb, fried kalamata olive salad and good good wine.

The next morning, Bonnie and Bill took off for the Bay Area, and theoretically, Steve and I weren't far behind. We just had a few things to do before we could leave. Those few things turned into repacking all of our stuff, going through nine months of mail, answering emails and doing some business. We left Carmel around 3:00 p.m. Just in time to get up to Menlo Park, drop our things off and get back in the car to hit some good 'ol rush hour traffic on our way to dinner with Keith. We dined at Kuleto's Trattoria off of the 101. I only discovered this place because I used to meet my friend Dyna there when she was living in the city and I was living in Redwood City. Aside from being a great meeting spot between those two places, it's a fantastic restaurant.

We woke the next morning at Soop's place and of course had Peete's and bagels for breakfast. So good. We must have done something on the 15th, as I know we didn't have a free minute the entire trip, but for the moment I can't remember what we did!

I do know that Friday was an up-early day (weren't they all) to meet Heather and her new baby, Emily, at Stanford for coffee and shopping. I still needed a dress for Carrie's wedding and Steve needed a suit. Soopy went with us and we sat outside Max's Opera House Cafe sipping good hot coffee (not from Peete's) and enjoying the crisp morning and sunshine. Heath arrived on time, of course, around 10:00 a.m.; Soop left us to get some work done; and we walked into Macy's and found Steve's suit.

Okay, it wasn't really that easy. We did find his suit in the first one we looked at, but it would take us the better part of 45 minutes to get back to that suit and get him into it. We finished his suit shopping around 1:00 p.m. -- do you believe it?! -- and he took off for lunch with Soop, while Heath and I opted for Nordie's cafe. Emily was a doll the entire time and Heather takes to being a mom like a fish to water. I loved meeting her daughter and getting to spend an entire morning with them. After lunch, Heath and I spent another couple of hours finding my dress. She talked me out of a floor-length teal number and into the gorgeous fucia dress you all saw in pictures of the wedding. Thanks Heath!

We were supposed to meet up with Donnora (Donn Denman and Nora Kim) who's house and dogs we sat way back in . . . 2001? Is that possible? We realized that we didn't have time to really get much of a visit in and changed our date to Tuesday breakfast which worked out perfectly. We barely had enough time to hurry over to MKIA's house (Steve's brother's family's acronym) to be late for a family dinner. Not that anyone told us what time it started, but that's beside the point, as we wouldn't have gotten there any before we did either way! Marty cooked us up some incredibly delicious apple-marinated ribs. I simplify by that description the work that went into these ribs, and how many different types of appleness helped them become some of the best ribs I've ever had. Marty is a true talent in the kitchen. Dinner was too short, but it was nice to have all the Broyles at one table. I was exausted, and crashed out early, leaving the boys to talk for a couple more hours.

The kids were up early on Saturday, and therefore, so were we. But I got to read the comics with Isabelle and bead with both Isa and Austin before my sister got there to pick me up for our weekend trip to Santa Cruz. Cristie and I haven't spent more than two hours together in over two years, and that was with other people around. So we were both looking forward to the time together.

The drive over the hill was gorgeous and SC was sunny and warm! We made a bee line for Aldo's, where you'll find the best fried calamari in California. His restaurant sits on a little pier in the SC harbor across from the Crow's Nest. He's remodelled in the years since we've been going there, but it's still a mom and pop place and he still has the best seats of anywhere in SC on his pier-deck. Cristie and I managed to put away at least half of our calamari, ceasar salad and onion rings. The rest of the day pretty much revolved around talking, eating and drinking and where we were going to go next to do some more talking, eating and drinking, with a great trip to the Boardwalk thrown into the mix! We rode the pirate ship, the Big Dipper (of course) and the sky car thing. We searched all the arcades until we found a photo booth where we made goofy faces and got our little strip of pictures. We both liked them so much we did it over again, so we'd each have a strip. We shared an ice-cream sunday on the sand and generally had a wonderufully childish time of it.

We still had plently of late afternoon left, so we decided to spend some of it on the Crow's Nest's patio. We enjoyed the sun and a glass of pinot grigio until we decided it was time to go downtown and figure out where we were going to eat dinner. We made a brief detour into Urban Outfitters, ostensibly looking for a bathroom, and got caught doing a little shopping instead. I found some great t's for both me and Steve and Cristie made it out empty handed. We finally found our bathroom in Pearl Alley Bistro, an old favorite of mine and Katie's way back when. Pearl Alley treated us well with a nice pinot noir and some oysters on the half shell. We had ourselves a couple of glasses of wine and some fresh bread and olive oil, some wonderful conversation and directions to a good Thai place to take us on into the rest of the evening.

We stopped by the Thai place, didn't like it, and found another one just down Mission where we ordered a handfull of yummy things to go. We got to our hotel, put on our swimmies and eased our way into the . . . luke tub. Luke or not, it was fun and relaxing and the freezing run back to the room full of giggles. We feasted on our Thai food, relaxed in bed with the new In Style and fell asleep happy and full and tired.

Labels: california, travel, wedding