One of them is that while I'm officially too old to be invited to many baby
and wedding showers in California, I was amongst the mid to young crowd at
the wedding shower for Erick and Robin. I easily remember when Erick's older
sisters, Elisa and Rachel were born. So the fact that I attended "little"
Erick's wedding shower made me feel young and old at the same time :).
The differences in showers out here doesn't stop with them inviting friends
of all ages (which is something I really do like, by the way). That was just
the start. People out here work really hard, but when it's time to play,
they do that well too. The shower was a couple's shower, which I thought was
fun and Michael was dubious about. For the games, just let me say I think it
was the first time I've played shower games involving a wheelbarrow and a
four wheel drive golf cart. I'll leave it at that...
Michael has already waxed eloquent about the outhouse and road leading to
the lake, so I'll spare you a second diatribe. Now if we can get all the
sand out of the boys' hair, we'll be doing good...
Climbing in the Canyons
Today we had talked about heading into town to see Grandma, however, Ian and
slept in until 9:30, loosing a good portion of the day by the time we would
have gotten dressed and drove the hour into town. Besides, the guys had
already started smoking a brisket. The chicken we smoked last week was so
amazing, there was no way I wanted to sabotage an even better smoked meat.
The beauty of country life is that on lazy days, you don't even have to do
much more than brush your teeth and hair.
We had a can of pop (soda, for you Californians) with my Uncle Rich, which
was a treat. His mannerisms are more like my Grandmother's every time I see
him. It's bitter sweet as the memories of special times I shared with my
Grandma Geneve come flooding back.
In the afternoon, Michael, my dad and I took the boys exploring through the
sand canyons out east of the house. Brendon drove and had to give a running
dramatic commentary about the difficulty of driving a truck with no power
steering the entire trip (we took the 1957 International truck my parents
bought three months before I was born).
Brendon and Ian set the itinerary for our hike. I'm glad we let them. The
beauty of sand cliffs is that when we ran into the 9 foot cliffs, we were
able to carve out foot and hand holds with the garden spade and trowel we
brought along. It was a nice bit of exercise and after climbing all the way
from the river valley to the top of the hills, we walked around and came to
the sand pit the boys love to play in from the top instead of the riverside,
like we normally do. They made a sand slide (similar to a snow slide) and
had a great time playing in the biggest sandbox you'll ever see. It was a
hoot to watch them.
Well I need to get to bed so I can have smoked brisket on homemade rolls
tomorrow. That sounds like a good breakfast, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment