hey. finally got the rest of our pictures uploaded and such, so here’s the set from our trip.
enjoy.
*i ought to have written a full post on our experiences, but it was mostly just family events, graduation events and wine tasting… here’s a quick summary of the week
graduation, golf, another round of golf, wine tasting, chefs market downtown, dinner & wine at different family members’ houses, check in to hotel, pool, fancy dinner at bouchon, graduation party, goodbyes!
We’re in Denver right now… Kris told me to write a post.
done and … done
-w
home safe.
attempted to come home monday night…but as the the engine and wing on the left outside our window was smoking, with nuclear firefighters walking around checking it out, they decided it was better to cancel our flight and put us out the next day. although it caused me and cassie to miss an additional day of work, and leave carolyn stranded, we weren’t too sad about swapping a red puffy eye flight for a night in a real bed.
so, although 8 hours late, we landed in nashville…exhausted but happy to be home.
the rest of the trip after my previous post was no let down. sunday morning we had a nice breakfast out, and then made our way to irvine to continue the graduation events. a very busy and full party for brett consumed the afternoon, and at 6:30 we said goodbye to mom and dad (as they left for scotland and ireland!), and visited rock harbor. a very cool church indeed…flooded with people our age, passionate worship and an honest message.
everything seemed to settle down after church; the house had emptied, and cassie and i found ourselves just hanging out at sherry and mark’s for the evening. but we had a big day ahead, so we rolled off to bed fairly early.
since brett had graduated, and his job doesn’t start for a few weeks, he found himself doing nothing on monday, so he tagged along to disneyland with us! we had a fabulous time hanging out with michael (and a little bit with claire) all day and really getting the royal treatment…michael had all these fancy little slips of paper that took us to the front of the line of pretty much any ride. i don’t think i can ever go back to disneyland without him! it was fun to go on all the old favorites, and discover new little things they’ve changed here and there to keep it fresh. it was also fun showing cassie everything, as this was her first time. we were dead tired by 5 (i honestly have no idea how these people can push a stroller around all the way till 10 or 11 at night!), and almost lost our car in the massive parking structure after saying bye to michael.
but we made it back to the house, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed to the airport…which you already know was a waste of a trip.
i am happy to be home…work welcomed me with a HUGE pile of stuff to do from just three days of absence, so I’ve been kept busy keeping on top of things. it was good to be with wil again, and the dogs seemed pretty excited too. it’s taking me a while to get back into the routine…we’ll see how long my bag sits packed on the floor before i open it and do laundry.
i haven’t had a chance to upload any pictures yet…the last two evenings i’ve knocked out on the couch (how is that different from any other night?), so maybe tonight. we’ll see…
everyone’s taking a shower, and i’m next in line…so here i sit at the computer killing time. even on vacation i can’t stay away from the internet.
our flight on thursday was fantastic…direct, a good movie, no turbulence…i also welcomed cassie to the world of noise cancelling headphones. she’ll never go back. we also had the pleasure of sharing the flight with naomi judd (we sat next to her in the waiting area prior to leaving as well, and discovered we were also on the flight with a christian group “the isaacs”…i have never heard of them, but i might research and see if i’ve unknowingly heard a song of theirs.
we were excited to see grams’ face at the airport upon our arrival, and immediately got lost in the sketchiest part of la, trying to go home (in our defense, all the usual on ramps to the freeway were blocked for some reason)…cassie got to see a different side of la, as grams naively tried to pull our car over next to the scariest building with boarded up windows and no lights. nice.
we made it to the house safely, and soon after mom and dad pulled up after they arrived at a different airport also that night. a happy reunion indeed, but since it was feeling like 1 and 2 am, to us, we headed to bed.
the last two days have been a whirlwind to say the least…there has been no lack of sites seen by us. friday morning started with brett’s convocation ceremony (a baccelauriette of sorts), lunch at an authentic thai restaurant, a tour of the gamble house (one of the most well known american arts and crafts homes by greene and greene, and the owner gamble being from the original proctor and gamble). after a quick meal at home, we were already off again, heading to the symphony in downtown la, at the new(ish) disney concert hall, by frank gehry. cassie and i didn’t know what to be more amazed at…the structural feats of the building or the amazing players in the philharmonic.
saturday was not as full, but still one thing after another. we attempted to go to the huntington library, but with an unexpected decision to the see the pasadena showcase house (our boss would be so proud!), that got nixed and we headed to the ritzy hills of pasadena. the spanish colonial house was interesting to compare to the interior design of the south that we have grown accustom to. we had a few moments of rest back at the house at the pool, before leaving again to get an early parking spot and seat at brett’s graduation. and it’s good we did…sitting in the football bleachers for 5 hours would not have been a good thing if we didn’t grab the top row with bars to lean back on! we watched 700 students go by, and in a bizarre moment, we heard two students from sisters announced across the stage…one happening to be my old high school boyfriend. we tried to scour the football field after the ceremony with no luck. mom and dad also tried to find some old family friends of nana and papa’s that had a granddaughter graduating as well. instead, we just ended up taking a bunch of pictures with brett, hugging him and congratulating him. you’d think our day would have ended there, but we decided on a whim to drive down to hollywood to see the happenings there…after a cruise down the jampacked hollywood blvd, we got out at kodak theatre, walked on the steps where the stars walk up every oscars, put our hands in the prints of stars old and young, and saw a glimpse of a portion of the stars on the walk of fame. equally as entertaining were to see all the scantilly clad girls going to the clubs on the saturday night. no hollywood sign on the hill for us though…it was not lit up. 
well, i think i heard the shower stop, so it’s my turn to get ready…i think everyone will be waiting for me at this point. we’ve got breakfast, brett’s graduation party, and a few post party events in line for the day. hope you are all well! i will probably deal with all my pictures after i get back…
in t-minus 3 hours, me and cassie are off to southern california for a long weekend. woohoo!
we get to celebrate a number of things while we are there:
i don’t know if wil’s too jealous at me having a girly/family weekend without him…he’s got two friends staying the week, so i know there will be plenty of cigars, halo, beer, poker, and other manly things (that i probably don’t want to know about!) to take part in during my absence.
(taken by wil on a past trip…but just posting it to get myself revved up for the flight!)
it’s been a nice lazy saturday so far…well, pretty much every saturday is lazy, but it just seems extra nice for some reason. we went out to a wine tasting/jazz night with some friends last night, and with wil getting home by noon from an opening shift this morning, and me sleeping in a bit later than usual… it feels like he’s been home all day. even the girls have been fairly mellow all morning which is good for ava.
wil picked her up yesterday and i think she was relieved to be back home. she’s was only there for one night, and didn’t eat well while there, so just that made her look like skin and bones when she got back! it’s just so hard to keep weight on her because she’s so gangly and growing. i wondered if gracie missed her or not because she was bizarrely giddy and silly with me the entire night ava was gone, but wil affirmed that gracie truly was super excited to see ava come back through the door. ahhh…they actually do love each other. sleepy ava is a nice change from her normal state, but i doubt it will last very long. she’s supposed to stay mellow for 10 days. pssh….but she’s recovering well with shaved belly and all.
while the laundry’s tumbling in the other room, and with nothing good on tv (we attempted to watch a silly earthquake movie from a few years ago on tv, but it was too cheesy for us to last more than 10 minutes), wil has put the halo on and he told me to write a post. about what? nothing has happened…but i did realize we’ve got a few things on our plate in the next few months that all kind of arose in the last couple weeks.
in about a week we get to host bill and leila for a few days. yay! we love visitors! and we love family visitors even more! since bill’s work stuff is pretty minor, we have quite a bit of time to just hang out and enjoy nashville. we’ve started a list of places to eat, but a few nights i think leila will give us lessons on some awesome italian meals also. can’t wait for that. we’ll go to the hermitage for some civil war history, wil plans to give us all an authentic coffee tasting at his store, and i will hopefully be able to show them through the house that i’ve been heavily involved in at work, since it’s pretty amazing. otherwise our plans will probably fairly low key, maybe hang out with some friends here and there.
a somewhat impromptu trip has been planned for the first of may for me…cassie and i will get to fly out to california for a long weekend…seeing a few historical and architectural sites that we’ve always wanted to visit, going to brett’s azusa graduation and festivities, and then visiting michael at disneyland! we can’t wait for a fun girly/family vacation. flights were a bit tricky…it’s not quite as easy to take a bunch of time off of work when the two of us both work at the same company, of only 3 people! so to make our time off as minimal as possible we’ll fly out right after work on thursday (easy), and then on monday night we leave cal at 9 pm, hop all over the country, and get to nashville at 9 the next morning…and then go straight to work that day. yes we are crazy, and our boss agrees with that statement (she does realize she will be working with two zombies that day), but hey, we’re young and we’ll bounce back!
although not finalized yet, we have one more trip the next month…out to napa for van’s high school graduation in june. wil and i will be able to be out there for almost a week! i’ve been to napa only once before for his sister’s graduation, but have never truly experienced napa the glamorous way people think you would…it was just to visit family. i keep hinting to wil that i want him to take me to do something very wine countryish…or just something a tourist would do.
to look at the calendar and think that after these three big things, it will already be july! and hot! i hope our back yard is really usable and enjoyable by that time. and i really hope we can go camping more than the one time last year. we thought earlier, “great, we have a bigger car this time to take the dogs and camping gear!” but realized our dogs are so big, that we still don’t have enough room for both of them and all the camping stuff…so if anyone would like to come with us, please do so we can use your car as well! : )
well, the laundry just beeped…and if i don’t get up to change it right now, it will sit in there for hours. i hope everyone else enjoys their weekend! happy saturday.
it’s taken me some time to get my christmas trip pictures all on the computer and onto flickr…have were loaded onto the laptop and the second half was on the camera, and of course, every time i thought about working on it, i’d realize wil was at work with the laptop.
anyways, i finally got them up. i probably took way too many pictures considering we all know what we look like, being family members and all; and the only things we did all week were hang out, play games and open gifts, but that’s ok. someday maybe i’ll look back and say to myself “i’m so glad i caught that random expression during that random moment”.
so, instead of just saying, go ahead and take a look at my flickr account, i am giving you a link directly to a slideshow of the set. hopefully that makes it easier to look through them all, since there’s about 200 pictures. and i recommend putting a song on in the background while it plays (sorry i don’t have the ability to do that with this link). oh, and some of the last few photos are not in chronological order like the rest of the set since they were taken with my phone- oh well. enjoy!
christmas and new years in sisters…
