This weekend the family headed out to Santa Cruz for Pat and Melinda's wedding. Since we were taking the whole crew, we extended the trip a few days on the back end to see a little bit of the area and then to meet Michelle in San Francisco for a couple of days before heading back home.
It was great to see Pat and Melinda before the wedding, as well as the rest of the family and some of Santa Cruz. Some non-wedding highlights of the trip were seeing the Boardwalk area with the kids, some of the coast, and Pour (a taproom with dozens of different brews on hand). The kids were too small to ride any of the rides, so they mostly played video games and things like bean bag toss. I particularly enjoyed Pour, where I was able to sample 1 ounce throwbacks of several different kinds of drinks that I had never tried before.
Moving on to the wedding rehearsal, Julia was one of the flower girls and Jonathan was the ring bearer. But regardless of that, they were attached to the bride and groom at the hip. Especially Jonathan with Melinda...he loves being with his new aunt.
Aaron and Brenda's daughters were in the wedding too, so it was good to see them again. The kids did great on the rehearsal run through and I think liked being part of all the festivities. The last picture is Michelle and I outside the front of our first house in the Presidio that was taken for Mom and Dad. Although this picture was taken several days after the others, I included it here since I had space for one more vertical photo.
You are looking at the best lemonade stand in history. The little buggers made over $40 from selling regular and pink lemonade, freshly baked cookies, and freshly made popcorn among other snacks! I think that they could have made more if thunderstorms wouldn't have rolled in.
The previous day the girls in the neighborhood dressed up for a tea party next door at Kaitlyn's. That didn't last long and it turned into them selling snacks to other kids on the block. When I came home that night Julia convinced me to run to Target to get supplies for tomorrow's lemonade stand. We picked up the poster board, plates, and new containers of lemonade mix. I believe the next day Stacey took care of buying the cookie dough and they made the food up in the morning.
The prices were reasonable...about 25 cents for a drink and a little more for a snacks. A couple of people gave them a $5 bill, and some neighborhood boys came back more than once for more cookies. It helped that they parked themselves on a corner by the park and by a busier road. I was very happy that the effort was a success. It was helped by Mom advertising on the community Facebook page. That scared up some additional traffic that probably wouldn't have known about the stand.
I did mention that they really made less if they paid for all their supplies. At the end of the day they had to split it 3 ways since they partnered with our neighbor Kaitlyn. Although they didn't invite some other kids from our street that helped with the snacks the day before, they quickly realized that the next time they do this they are going to only involve each other. That way, they only have to split the money two ways (and they don't have to deal with other kids). It was funny to hear them talk about it and essentially make their first rounds of "firing" other kids. Ha!
Big kudos to Stacey for making this happen, lugging all the supplies and equipment out there, and standing outside with them. It was a great memory for everyone.
On a last minute whim I decided to fly out to see Michelle and U2 in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl. We had talked about the concert months ago, but didn't really pay much attention to it until the date got closer. I had thought about going the week of the show, but then decided not to go because I was really busy at work. Then, a coworker that sits a couple of desks over reminded me that she was flying out to see the concert with a friend. After talking about it and looking at some old pictures, I decided to pull the trigger and book the flights.
This was probably going to be the last time I would see U2 and it was a good opportunity to see Michelle as well. I had never been to the Rose Bowl either. And...I had a free taxi service and place to stay (i.e. Michelle).
We ended up walking over 10 miles on Saturday around Pasadena. We walked to lunch and then ran an errand or two before heading over to the shuttle pick up area. The line was hugely long, so we decided to keep on walking another 30 minutes or so to the stadium.
The show was good. It was cool to hear all of my favorite songs from the Joshua Tree album plus a few other well known songs from their long and impressive career.
The opening act was The Lumineers. One of the highlights of the show was the massive video screen behind the stage. It played full screen videos that were related to the song U2 was playing, or it split the screen doing that plus showing a closer view of the band. This was welcomed as it was hard to see much of the stage from where we were sitting.
I was pretty beat the entire time after working a very busy week, flying in, and not getting to sleep until after 1:30 a.m. Colorado time both nights. Although I'm not yet 40 years old, I definitely felt that. I'm sure much of the crowd felt the same way the next day, seeing as most of them were also my age or older and probably had to wake up early the next morning to "adult".
