Mike’s mom Shirley, brother Rich, and Rich’s girlfriend Maria flew into LA the Tuesday before the wedding and then made the trip to the Bay Area for the wedding with us. They landed at LAX, and we picked them up and did a whirlwind single day tour of LA. We saw Santa Monica, and Venice beach. A close up look at the ocean in Venice…
So it was a long, and fairly sandy and wet, drive home. But it was some good body surfing 🙂
We left at 4 am the next day to drive up north (it was 7am for them since they were still on Toronto time) – with no rear visibility in the car thanks to the massive amount of material in my wedding dress. We had a full day planned: not only the 10 hours of travel time (too extra long since we went the coastal route), but also stopping to see Elephant seals, trees in Big Sur, Monterey and the aquarium there.
While in Monterey we got a call from our dog sitter, who was picking up Gracie that afternoon. “Everything is fine…” Uh oh… good conversations never start that way… “… but she ate your couch.” I told her not to worry, that it was already ripped, but “no… there was fluff EVERYWHERE!!”. Guess the little girl knew we weren’t coming home so soon.
We reached our destination around 10pm, exhausted. Off to bed, ready to get up and have another big day: this time touring part of Sonoma (where I grew up).
And then off to the east bay for dinner with my dad and my brother’s family. We saw a metal gorilla on the side of the road on the way.
Friday we went over to San Francisco, and for that trip Mike’s dad Bert and stepmom Gisela joined us (for part).
After that it was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, and then Mike left to the hotel with his mom and it was the final night single! It would be wedding day when we woke up.