Hospitality and gratitude

These guys are all over Santa Rosa, but only this one had a cute toddler on it

Our trip to California was relatively successful - we met with the vendors and made some choices, plus we were able to spend time with friends and family (well, my mom) and managed to eat Mexican, Indian, Thai, Ethiopian (Eritrean) and sushi (at midnight, homemade). The dancing was fun (Dan did better than I did at intermediate two-step); I bought my wedding dress; and the only bad part of the trip was all the damn traffic we ended up sitting in on Saturday and Sunday.
Hank
Dexter

The best part of the trip, for me, was getting to spend time with friends. On Friday evening we had dinner at Sara's house. She and her husband made a fancy dinner with a cheese/nut/fruit plate, baked goat cheese salad, plank-grilled salmon and corn, and some sort of elaborate rice dish - and then finished up with more fruit and delicious chocolate. We only had a short time in which to see them since the dance lesson my mom wanted to take started so early, but we did get to see their house (so cute! such cool details!) and yard and pet their doggies, Hank and Dexter. Dan had an especially good time with the doggies. Most of all, I was so touched that they wanted to go all-out with this awesome dinner even though we only got to be at their place for a short time. Thanks again, Sara, for such a great dinner - please visit us in Denver, or perhaps next time we come out we can take you guys out someplace yummy.



Saturday, after our hours of traffic, meeting, Indian chaat (Vik's!), traffic, waiting, meeting, traffic, wanting to commit homicide, traffic, we finally met up with Leah and Simon at Berkeley Bowl to procure supplies for dinner. The sushi-making process was a lot of fun (though time consuming) and we passed the wait time in the hot tub with champagne. Their house and garden (and hot tub!) are to die for, the guest room and amenities were all anyone could ask for, and we had such a good time that we kind of spaced out on leaving in time for our last thing on Sunday and ended up being an hour late. That's just how much fun we were having. I might end up paying them to adopt me so I can hang out with the gnome in the backyard.


My only real regret about the weekend was that we didn't have more time to spend with everyone - there are certainly times that I wish we lived in the Bay Area so we could see everyone all the time and not have to schedule visits for our trips. All y'all are, of course, more than welcome to visit us in Denver - we even have a spare room we can dig out for you, and there are always extra towels in the bathroom. We don't have a hot tub or awesome doggies, but we've got eight coffee mugs and can make a mean mojito from the mint in the garden.