Little Bro gets married

Yesterday my dear little brother-in-law, Jeff, got married to his very beautiful bride, Andi, in Manhattan Beach;

Sister-in-law Jenny, the bride Andi, and mother-in-law Marty.

The newlyweds getting ready to leave on their honeymoon to Thailand. I can't believe Jeff is old enough to get married, rather than the 12 year old I first met 16 years ago. I can only hope he played "I Believe I Can Fly" from Space Jam at his wedding because that was his favorite as a kid. He made Little Man and I listen to it over and over and over again. Here's to Jeffers - many happy wishes!

Parks + beer = our weekend

Not wanting to lose our last chance to enjoy the great outdoors before the 100 degree temps return starting tomorrow, we hopped up out of bed this morning and headed out to DeGarmo Park on the north end of town for an early morning walk around the soccer fields. The park is next door to the golf course the Canadian swings at, so he'd visited it before and thought it would be a nice change of scenery for us. Apparently it's fairly new, built within the last year, and even offers a dog park which was already busy with lots of furry friends playing chase together.

Clearly I designed this playground seeing as how it's in full sun and probably inflicts third degree burns on anyone who dares to tackle it. It's like Grandma's furniture in the formal living room - you can look, but you cannot touch. Though I did enjoy walking around on the squishy, soft rubber mat flooring material. At least when the children jump in agony off the burning hot playground equipment they'll land on something soft.

The park is just north of the Eaton Rd exit on Hwy 99 and the walking path on the east end of the park follows right along side of the freeway, only separated by what I hope is an incredibly strong chain link fence. The Canadian was tempted to stop and have breakfast with a Mormon looking group of folks who were using the big pavilion to cook up some seriously delicious smelling breakfast eats, but I was pretty sure Jesus would not be amused so we passed.

After finishing some morning chores we took a break and drove down the street to Spike's Bottle Shop which is right across the street from our gym. Last week there was a great article on them in the CN&R which talked about their extensive selection of craft and specialty beers so how could we not check it out?

Thankfully it was all true, they did have an incredible selection of beer and stuff that was completely different that what's available at Ray's up in P-town. We found two beers that were from Bamberg Germany which will be one of our cruise stops and is famous for their rauchbier (smoked beer). Chris found 5 different brews to enjoy over the weekend and there were definitely more to come back for later. Living in a beer town definitely works to our advantage!

Swedish Life

I went away for a long girl's weekend this last weekend with Kari to her family's cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's in a Swedish community full of sweet little Scandinavian cottages. Kari's cabin flies large Swedish and Norwegian flags for her mom's heritage (3/4 Norwegian and 1/4 Swedish) and is completely decked out with Norwegian decorations. We left Friday morning and, after arriving, spent the afternoon relaxing at the cabin. Saturday we drove 1 1/2 hours to the Laguna Seca racetrack for an all day Christian music festival.

Excellent day full of music, port-a-potties, and lots and lots of sun.

That's me living the lobster life! We had big plans Sunday to hang out at the pool, but I didn't want to be anywhere near the sun so we just stayed home instead drinking wine and reading travel magazines. On our way home Monday we stopped in Gilroy and hit the outlets which turned out to be a bust for me. My shopping mojo must have been off, but the rest of the weekend was a huge win!