A reception made in Paradise

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Traci and I went back to California to celebrate our marriage with my family. My sister Cindy, Brenda, and my mother spent the past year planning to ensure that our visit would be memorable. The original plan was to have the reception at one of the local Indian Casinos; however, after some consideration, everyone agreed that it would be more intimate if we kept the guest list to about 50 and held it in Cindy and Jack's backyard. Several people contributed in many ways to make our special day unforgettable. Before I write anymore, I want to give a special thanks to the following people: Cindy, Jack, Brenda, My Mother, Liz, Christine and Aunt Belen.

The Vega Family

The Oberg's

Grandma Rose made it out for the event

Cindy did a heck of a job of keeping the guest list at around 50 people and had spent the last year getting in touch with friends that I hadn't seen in years (some as many as 15), close friends of the family and most importantly our relatives. It was great re-uniting with everyone and introducing them to my new bride... Even though the wedding was almost a year ago, I still consider us in the honeymoon phase. :-)

High school buddy Mike

As most of you know, I grew up not knowing my father. As a matter of fact, before the reception, I had only met him twice. Once when I was about 13 (I remember very little) and the other time was when I returned from Desert Storm where Cindy, Jack and I went bowling with him and had dinner. Since our visit, I have spoken with him about a 1/2 dozen on the phone. Cindy made contact with him and encouraged him to come up and see us. He came up a day early and we were able to spend a little quality time getting to know each other. I learned that I have 4 brothers and 1 sister somewhere in the Bay Area and that he is a very hardworking man who spent time as a police officer, beautician (he said he did this to meet chicks.. he met my mom) and has spent the better part of his life running his own janitorial business, Mr. Clean.

Me and my dad John

Mom, Me, Traci and John

In case any of you were wondering where I learned how to be a smart ass... well, I can now tell you that the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. He gave my mom the business his first night in town. :-)

On the day of the reception, Traci and I helped set up and readied ourselves for the exciting evening ahead. Everyone started arriving about 4pm and I had an incredible time getting re-acquainted and introducing Traci to all these special people. The night was perfect!! We had a catered BBQ dinner, Tiki lamps for ambiance, a keg of Dos XX and two beautiful cakes. Cindy had two cakes made, a carrot cake for me and a strawberry one for Traci.

Brenda testing the keg

Our cakes

Being very nice

The day following the reception, family members who had kids were invited back to and hang out with Traci and I and help eat the leftovers. We played some cards, opened gifts and lounged around trying to recover from the night before.

Jack cleaning up the last of the mess

We left Paradise a couple of days later with enough memories to last a life time!! Thanks to all who came and celebrated with us.

If you would like to see all of the photos, you can click on the link below:

http://picasaweb.google.com/traciandbill/ParadiseReception

Bill and Traci

Garden Update

I just wanted to throw up a few pictures of what the garden looks like now. The tomato plants are out of control. There are bunches of little green tomatoes on all of the plants and it is just a matter of time before they ripen and we can start to enjoy them.

The carrots

There is a cucumber in there if you look hard enough.

Our pride and joy :-)

It would appear that the rabbit got the better of the Peas and we will not have any this year. It might be worth it to plant them again next year to keep them from eating anything else.

Since we have already harvested all of the radish, we decided to plant a jalapeno plant and habenero.

Hope all is well with you.

Bill and Traci

I left my heart... in San Francisco

Traci and I have been planning a trip to California for about a year now. Since my family is huge and most members were unable to make the wedding in South Dakota, they did the next best thing and invited everyone to Paradise for a reception. Unfortunately, the only time that worked for everyone was about a year later. (I will write more about the reception later)

We left Kansas City on June 3rd headed for the West Coast. Our first day in San Francisco was supposed to start around 11am; however, due to fog, we did not get on the ground until about 2 that afternoon. A close friend of the family, Liz, offered to let us crash at her place and use her extra car. We are very appreciative for her helping us out.

Immediately after our plane landing, we started on our journey around the town that is known for its cable cars, buses, trolley's, boats rides, and heavy traffic. We quickly learned how to use BART and made our way to Liz's place in San Bruno.

Getting ready to board BART

So many places to go

We spent the first afternoon and night driving and walking around Fisherman's Wharf. For those of you who have never been there, it consists of restaurants, shops were you can buy trinkets, lots of boats and LOTS of interesting people to watch.

Fisherman's Wharf

The Golden Gate Bridge was screaming at us to come and check it out so we had no choice but to head that way. The fog had not yet burned off and the wind was howling as we made our way across this beautiful man-made creation. There were tons of people out that doing the same thing we were doing. We spent about an hour enjoying the views and then made our way back to Fisherman's Wharf to have dinner at Joe's Crab Shack.

Walking across the Golden Gate

The Golden Gate in the fog

Traci is a pretty good planner and had purchased tickets months ago for a tour of Alcatraz. So the next morning we woke up and made our way to Pier 33. Liz offered to drive us as she has years of city driving experience and would be able to get us downtown in the quickest manner. Mario Andriette has nothing on Liz in the city. She knew every shortcut imaginable and was bobbing and weaving through the stopped cars. We arrived at the pier in time to make our boat and in one piece.

We spent the next 4 hours or so walking around the tiny island of Alcatraz. It used to be a prison back in the day, a one time Native American Cultural Center and now it is a tourist attraction. I am sure many of you have seen the prison in film: "The Rock" or "Escape from Alcatraz". If you have not been there, I highly recommend setting some time aside and making the trip.

Alcatraz "The Rock"

The Main Entrance

Once we were back on the mainland, we made our way to some of the local beaches and cruised through a few of the local parks. Castro is a part of town that we had on our "to-do" list. There is not much to do here but walk around, check out the people and stare into some of the local shop windows. The Castro district has a high concentrate of gay people living, working and shopping and has been considered a gay district since the late 70's. Since we weren't there to eat or shop, we snapped some pictures walked up and down the road and then moved on to the next item on our list.

San Francisco's Castro District

If you ever want to get a great picture of the city and its surrounding area, I would recommend driving up to the top of Twin Peaks and checking out the view. The view is breathtaking and the only thing you can hear is the wind blowing.

The view from Twin Peaks

After making our way around both hilltops, we made our way to an area that was made famous by the 60s, drugs and the free spirit of those who frequented the area. We spent about an hour and a half walking the streets of Haight-Ashbury. This is a cross street that houses several head shops, smoking lounges and more interesting people wandering the streets.

The corner were it all happens

On our final morning, we headed to ChinaTown to see what it had to offer. If you are into LOTS of people milling about, fresh fruit, fresh poultry and digging through jade jewelry, then this is a place that you must visit. Everywhere on our trip, we had to pay something for parking. In most place we could park and pay 25 cents for 15 minutes or 2 hours of free parking. I think I emptied out all the change in my pocket to park for 45 minutes. The going rate of the meter that we parked at was 25 cents for 6 minutes. If you want to make some money, I would recommend going into the business of ripping of parking meters. You could probably retire after grabbing one or two of them.

China Town

Our San Francisco trip was incredible and we did so much. I could go on writing about some of the other things we experiences, but will save it. :-) You can view all of our pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/traciandbill

I will do my best to write about our experiences at our California reception in Paradise. It was perfect!!

Take care,

Bill and Traci

Let's Eat!!

The garden has been growing like crazy! A few weeks ago Traci and I were able to pull and eat almost all of the Radishes and all the other vegetables look like smaller versions of the real thing. :-)

The garden as of 5/19/08

The tomato plants have come a long way

Our first Asparagus sprout

The sign says it all

Looks ready to be pulled

The "pluck"

The only thing that is having a problem growing are the peas. This cute little bunny comes by everyone morning and evening and nibbles on all 50 or so plants. To date, none of them have been able to climb on the trellis. That reminds me of a joke I heard a while back. How do you catch a unique bunny? Unique up on it... How do you catch a tame bunny? Tame way, unique up on it... It is funnier to hear it. If you give me a call, I will tell it to you.

The "bunny Peas

We left town about 8 days ago and are looking forward to seeing how out of control everything is. I promise to post pictures of everything. Our neighbors were so motivated with the work that we did that they spent the past couple of weekends turning dirt, moving logs and planting "stuff". I apologized to Sean (the man) for causing him to do so much work. ;-)

Life is good and I look forward to the day when I can post a picture of a big juicy watermelon that was picked from our garden.


Take care,

Bill and Traci