An Epic Saturday

Celebrating Grammy birthday, getting to see Haley and Rachel before they go back to college, and then since you are already in the Bay Area--go to see the Warriors in their fancy new (to us), arena all in one day.  Yeah that's a win.

Steph, we missed you today, sorry to see you were injured the week prior.

The boys all together at the game.

Some of the cool artwork up around the stadium.

Going up the escalator to our seats.

Jimmy Butler on the line, a month before his season ending ACL injury.

Warriors win, beating the Pelicans.

Feeling festive with my wife.

That's a big tree.

Traffic on the bridge at sunset.

Grammy and her grandkids.

Griffin, Garrett, Bryce, Rachel, and Haley.

Celebrating Grammy's birthday.

 

Celebrating Eric's 50th

When the best man in your wedding is going to turn 50, you set aside time to be there for the occasion.  When it is Eric, you know it is going to be a pretty epic event.  Complete with red carpet, great photography, excellent food, and the host decides to turn the table and share what he appreciates about everyone who is there.  That was pretty cool.

Long time friends:  Brett and Joy with Sharon and Eric

Security...bouncers...greeters, all in one, that's Bryce and Caleb.

The five of us all dressed up and ready.

Surrounded by Vijay and Heidi, fellow conspirators in adventures with Eric and Sharon.

The three families all in one picture.

Bryce wrapped up the open mic portion of the evening with an amazing medley of thoughts including Christian music concerts, Transformers, and Star Wars quotes.

Brett and Eric with their classic pose.

Brett opened up the free sharing time with some material he had prepared, he wanted to improve on his Best Man's speech from 23 years ago.

Garrett, Caleb, and Bryce getting excited about starting the evening.

A dazzling couples picture.

Grammy and Poppy grabbed an opportunity to speak on their time doing premarital counseling.

Brett happy to present for the event.

Arriving early to Castro Valley, we took time to do some training for Peru by hiking above Lake Chabot.

 

Thanksgiving

We had the day off because Brett works for the county for a second year now.  We choose to try something new with our turkey, spatchcocking and smoking it.  Grammy and Poppy came over to join us for a lunch around 1pm.  Relaxing and good food and conversation.

Family picture time, Bryce is home!

Grammy and Poppy join the picture, behind us, Wrecker tried to get into the picture too.

Grammy and Poppy with the boys.

Thanksgiving lunch around the table.

Smoking the turkey spatchcock style.

Mobilize the crew to prepare the meal.

Poppy brought his carver which helped immensely.

Spatchcocking our first turkey.

Playing Marvel Crisis Protocol.

 

Bryce Comes Home for the Holidays

We were happy to all pile into the car and drive to Sacramento to pick up Bryce and welcome him back into the family.  We took him into Old Town Sacramento and played indoor mini-golf in the gold mines and had a great lunch before returning home where Bryce got to love on the cats who he missed.

Relaxing on the couch and hearing stories of Internship from Bryce.

Playing disc golf while the weather is nice.

Mom played Villainous with all of us.

Garrett practiced guitar.

Final night activities for the Ambassador team.

Gold mine mini-golf.

Yummy lunch.

Thinking about our next trip to Peru.

Happy to have Bryce back with us.

Bryce on his last few days with the intern team and Mrs Whitehead and Mrs. Gunther.

 

Weekend Away

Brett and Joy were blessed with a Weekend to Remember by Grammy and Poppy and actually took the day off on Friday to be there in time and added an 18 hole golf day at Pacific Grove.  The other two in our foursome were quite the more experienced golfers than we were, but still we enjoyed the day with them.  It is pretty hard not to have fun when you are looking out over the ocean and the waves crashing as you navigate the back nine.  Then we had dinner at an outdoor Hawaiian style restaurant before arriving at the conference.  We knew that Willie and his wife were going to be at the Weekend to Remember, but we ended up meeting another couple from RCP family camp as well.  For the Saturday night out, we went into downtown Monterey which wasn't very busy due to the rain.  We ate at a Shanghainese restaurant that night and went up to an arcade together afterward.  On Sunday, we did some shopping and planning at REI for our Peru trip after lunch before coming home.

Garrett playing in the worship band.