Sluglife

So, yeah, our last post was in September... about a trip in August. And now it's October -- we're not even in the same season. What are we up to? We're tired. Exhausted is a better word. Here's Winston to demonstrate:

Excellent.
What's brought us to this point is the Perfect Storm of event planning: next weekend is the wedding for Rachel and Shawn, and it's here. By "here" I mean the wedding itself is actually going to take place in the back yard of one of the rental places next door. Here, maybe this map will help:

Okay, maybe not. But rest assured the ceremony will be beautiful -- we'll take pictures. And then the reception is in our yard. This last weekend -- yesterday -- we worked in the yard to get it ship-shape for the reception. Wow. I wanted to take pictures of the before and after, but the "before" slipped my mind, and for the "after" I was too tired to press the button down to actually take the picture, so... But we filled our green waste can and a neighbors and when I say fill, I mean if you were to turn the cans upside down you'd get a perfect green-waste-can-shaped solid mass of ivy and lawn trimmings. It would stand on its own probably for all of eternity. Think of Stone Henge in ivy. Like that, times two.
So, this coming weekend is that. Then, what? Time off to recover? Hell no, that's not how we roll. Seven days after the wedding comes the Alzheimer's Memory Walk, that penultimate event that has been building to a fever pitch.
After that then we hibernate. Seriously, don't even attempt to call the following weekend. We're disconnecting the phones, drawing the shades, and we might open the door to snatch pizza from the delivery guy, but otherwise you won't see or hear from us that weekend.
But before we get there, we've got two weeks of frenzy. I hope to post occasionally, and hopefully we'll get through it! :)

As I mentioned before, one of the things that's keeping us super busy has been Rachel's impending wedding which is going on... here. And it is just about upon us. Tomorrow, Saturday, is the big day, but last night Rachel, Shawn, and Rachel's fam showed up and preparations began in earnest. Here we tested out the lights strung over our backyard -- some are left up (and repaired) from the "80th birthday" party last year, but the ones over the driveway -- which feature some of the longest runs we've done -- are brand new. The only glitch came from the sets of lights which had been the most used and the most reliable -- the ones over the patio. Half of those are out. We're working on that.

Inside Rachel and her sister finished up assembling the favors:

And Anna worked on the cake:

Me? I stayed out of the way. But, seriously, watching Anna make that cake was impressive. She's done it a few times, but just the level of planning for everything... okay, she is an event coordinator at her job, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Surprise isn't correct -- amazed. Like watching the internals of a fine clock move. It just does. To a level that I couldn't imagine emulating.
So that was last night. Tonight we have setup, the rehearsal, the rehearsal dinner, cake assembly... everything. :)
One last cooking picture:

So, yeah, I posted some pictures from the wedding prep and then... what? We kind of left y'all hanging. No more! Where to start, where to start?
Wedding
Here are a few photos below. There are a whole lot more at the "Wedding Photos" link here . Or, if you like your pictures more professional-like, the photographer's pictures are here . But, here's the Cliffs' Notes version:
First, the ceremony. Based on Rachel and Shawn's recommendation we decided to have it not on the lawn behind the "Lucky Bend" house, but in the little grove next door, in the yard of the "Graystone Place" house -- I think that's what it's called (they're both rental properties and they have names so you can say "Oh, remember when we stayed at the Purple Platypus house? That was wonderful!" I don't think there's a purple platypus house, but there should be)

If anyone is interested in the ceremony I could post it here. Post a comment and let me know.
After the ceremony, we went back to our yard and things got under way -- here's the cake Anna made (anyone who was at our wedding knows what this tastes like):

Misha and Evan came up and played lovely cocktail music during the reception. It was really, really cool -- and I mean "cool" in the "It was neat!" as well as in the "woah, man, that's really cooooooool" sense. Because it was.

I call this one "Self Portrait with Bride and Groom":

Here you have the reception completely underway and Rachel passing out favors (which you saw them finish in the prep post -- scroll down, you'll find it):

Shawn, Anna, and Rachel -- aww!:

And, the side of the wedding no one saw (but us): the aftermath. This was post-wedding, post-cake cutting.... and this was representative of the rest of the house as well. Disaster area. But we got it cleaned up in record time!

As the evening grew darker, Shawn had rigged up a sheet over the office window and had a projector showing pictures and, when it was quite dark, he showed the video he made to propose to Rachel. Twas awesome!

So there you have it! The wedding in a nutshell! I highly recommend checking out the above links, as there are many, many more pictures. If you go to the photographer's website, check out picture 411. :)

Make sure you scroll down, because there's another post below (wedding stuff!) -- two posts in one day! I'm getting caught up, you see.
October 18th was the Wine Country Memory Walk, the penultimate day that Anna has been building to for a year. She barely had a week to catch her breath after Rachel's wedding, but that's how it's done in the big leagues, son!
Anyway, Gary and John came up to help set up Friday afternoon and night. I didn't take pictures for that, and it's for the best; there's less evidence. We start the story with a sunrise over the site:

While final setup commenced, Gary and John went over to a local golf course to get the golf cart that was donated for the event. Working hard, or hardly working, you be the judge:

Really, though, they worked their asses off. We all did.
Here's some more setup of the stage:

And the "Memory Pavilion":

The site itself was the back parking lot of a company called WorkRite, and was one long strip. The sunrise was from one end of the strip, and here's looking back, just in front of the stage:

Our friends Jennifer, David (Eric), and son, Brayden, are here ready to help with registration. Not in the picture (in fact he was out directing traffic) was Josh:

Once things got underway and the pre-walk ceremony had started, Anna gathered her route monitors at the trailhead to pow-wow and figure out where everyone would be.

I mentioned that the Walk setup and such took place in the parking lot of WorkRite. The actual walk was around Shollenberger Park in Petaluma. The walk is about three miles and is gorgeous for bird gazing -- hey, look at that, a cool hawk!

Told you it was good for watching birds!
Meanwhile, back at the event epicenter, everything was in full swing -- both sides of the strip were tables of sponsors and information booths, and non-profits, clowns, refreshments, even a unicorn petting zoo. Okay, I'm making up the part about the unicorns. Not the clowns, though. They were real. Too real.

Here's a view from just next to the stage during the ceremony:

And the rest was a blur. Walkers headed out. They came back. We tore down, stacked everything. Collapsed. We all went to bed around 8:30 and slept until.... about 8:30 the next morning. It was a loooooong, hard event. But it went off splendidly!
Four years ago we walked in the Treasure Island Memory Walk -- we had absolutely no clue that Anna would organize and execute a Memory Walk herself. And Treasure Island is a juggernaut -- the largest Memory Walk in the nation if I'm not mistaken. By contrast, Anna's walk wasn't quite of the same scale, but a) There's a staff that puts the TI walk together. The Wine Country Walk is organized by Anna and, in the last couple months, her minion. Throw in a dash of help from the North Bay Alz staff at large, and you've got a huge logistical ball of wax in Anna's paws. b) She doubled the number of walkers this year over last -- despite the fact that this is the first time at this location. I could go on and on because I'm extremely puffed up with pride over the amazing job that she did. Instead, I'll leave you with pictures of basset hounds:

These guys were the cutest of the myriad dogs at the event. Hopefully their cuteness is captured in this lousy picture -- I was exhausted by this point, but felt I had to get their picture.
So that's all for now! We're recovering.