EPG birthday

Continuing a practice noted here, here's a photo for the July 30 birthday boy:  EPG.

This was taken on July 27, 2003 - EPG was a mere 17.  (Or nearly so - I don't recall why the celebration was held a few days early.)

I rather liked this photo grouping.  PJ no doubt taking a straight-on picture with a camera using conventional film.  Mark S. prep'ing for graduation, it appears.

Happy birthday!

MN-IA trip (wedding in Mason City)

Nick Gales - Maeve Ryan wedding gave us a fine excuse to make the Minnesota-Iowa circuit last weekend.  

After lunch at Aster Cafe (Friday).  Mighty Mississippi in background.  Smiling people in foreground.

We didn't take photos of our own so are at the mercy of others for copies of theirs.  The few photos in this post were stolen without attribution sourced from a couple social media posts (meaning posts by Lancaster Gales plus a couple from EPG (if I recall correctly)), and are actually quite good.  (EPG will be my main source once he stops gallivanting to weddings and starts sharing his photos.  At this point we are missing photos of most of the important folks in attendance.)

Here's how it came down:

Thursday, July 19
PJ and I flew to MSP, ran into Jim & Carol at rental car counter, fit in lunch, then picked up CPG at airport.  Up to House house where Cecilia & Steve hosted us, and Charlie & Beth supplied the Yuengling and pork patties.  Beautiful late afternoon on the patio, then we moved inside.  Made another airport run in the evening and collected Kerry and Patrick.  Back to House house for euchre (six-handed).  Then to hotel (Charlie family there also).  Some played late-night euchre.

Thursday evening in New Brighton, MN.

Friday, July 20
Morning somewhat disjointed - got our group of five through the morning paces, then had to do some shopping - mostly because EPG suitcase zippers suffered a fail at MSP airport.  After shopping, ended up down by the river in Minneapolis for lunch at Aster Cafe - this turned out delightfully - good food and drinks, hosted by our three children.  Photos by the river.  Road trip to Mason City where we checked in.  Pretty quick turn-around to head to the rehearsal dinner - very nicely put together indeed.  Lots of chatting, good food and drink, nice toasts - very fine evening.  Late (very late, by my standards) euchre at the hotel, which was very fun.  Great turn-out of family members - eight of the nine of the siblings were here, lots of next-gen, Grandpa & Grandma, etc.  Fun to get acquainted with Ryan family - nice folks indeed.

Pretty sure this group could still clean out a corncrib (if we could just find one).  At rehearsal dinner.

Saturday, July 21
Early part of day flew by - partly because we slept in (again).  2p wedding at the church near Steve & Liz house - beautiful ceremony, including very good music (thanks in large part to Cullen performers).  Photos.  Back to hotel for a couple hours - this was a nice interlude.  I much enjoyed sitting 'round a big table with Chris and Bill Capesius, Romie & Joy, Kathy & Daryl, Mary Lou, my dad, Charlie, and others rotating in such as Art C and Steve H.  Fine to hear those so-familiar voices again, sometimes in that type of situation I don't even focus on the words at all.  On to the wedding reception at Mason City Country Club - nice setting, they did a great job with everything.  We sat with the Houses and the Haags - fun.  The dance went late into the evening.  PJ and I eventually back to room and to bed; our traveling companions arrived a bit later.  Then they went off for more euchre, and re-arrived, a bit later still.

Stars of the weekend.  At rehearsal dinner.

Sunday, July 22
We had planned to stay this extra day based on experience with POC/N and PJr/N weddings - the extra day gives a good chance to recap and catch up with everyone, without the time demands of scheduled events (fun as they are).  Main focus of the day was a gathering at Steve & Liz house - started around 11a (we arrived at noon), big crowd, pretty much everyone was able to stop by (even those that needed to peel off for home as the day wore on).  Took a nice walk across the bridge to the newly-restored Frank Lloyd Wright hotel in downtown Mason City with a small group including Barb, Emily, Dolores, Clare, Kieran, Carol, Jim, Therese (who knows, I might have the list wrong).  This was fun.

Lots of euchre (and Yuengling, for that matter)in party room.  Photo taken Friday night (or Saturday morning).

Then back to house, and focused on sitting in back yard with beers, snacks and nonstop chatter.  Which all went very nicely considering it was 97, somewhat humid, mostly shady under the trees, occasional breeze - really very pleasant July afternoon in the upper midwest.  Steve & Liz home and yard very well set up for this kind of thing.  This ended up being a full day there, very nice, they eventually arranged pizza for dinner, we sat around talking (or playing "apples to apples") until 8p or so.  Grandma and Grandpa stuck around 'til the end, which was nice.

At this point, all were gone except Jim & Carol, Haags, us - we all returned to hotel - ended up hanging around at the pool.  Chris and Patrick eventually jumped in, which led to the shenanigans shown in this video.



I halfway thought Allison, Emily, or both were going to be washed over the side of the pool, in the way that wreckage gets tossed up onshore from a stormy ocean.  But that didn't happen (fortunately).  It was a fun evening.

Monday, July 23
Mostly a travel day - nice chats with the few folks still at the hotel (same group as preceding evening) over breakfast, got organized, drove to airport, back to Phoenix, PJr picked us up.

Overall
1.  The wedding planning was excellent.  I'm starting to get a better feel for how much detail is involved.  They did a great job.  Steve & Liz were v. fine host/hostess.

2.  Nick & Maeve = very nice couple.

3.  Very, very fun to travel with PJ, K, CPG, EPG.  Aster lunch, "turntable" music on car ride, five folks in a room, endless series of fine moments.  (Too bad! that POC and N were at a different wedding, and PJr and Nedda were dealing with final throes of bar exam prep.  But our sub-group was excellent.)

Grandpa should have worn his wedding suit.  But this is still a nice photo.

4.  I'm the one who's lucky when it comes to family.  What a fine thing - two healthy 80-something parents; seven of eight siblings (with spouses) able to attend this one; a bunch of fine nieces and nephews, some now married to (or dating) interesting folks (and another generating starting with two young representatives), all full of life and personality, good conversationalists, respectful to we older folks and even show interest in our conversations; not to mention my own wife and kids, who are pretty much to brag on already.  Wow.  (A bonus at this wedding - as mentioned above, got to see some of my aunts, uncles, cousins who I see all too seldom.) 


Next wedding on the schedule:  May 2013.  Pennsylvania.  Looking forward to it.  


Info about other family weddings:  can be found here, here, and here.  (Or just click the "wedding" label in the box at right.)

Haboob'd (or something)

Just back from a most pleasant Midwest visit (will post separately on that shortly).  The locals had advised us of a storm moving through Phoenix while we were away.  It had a pretty big (and negative) effect on our back yard - now two of our "new" (circa 2009, as shown here) mesquites are toppled.

OK, it wasn't a surprise - we could see that these things had grown unsupportably top-heavy, and we had actually obtained price quotes on their removal last week.  But still, it's a significant loss.  Will take several years to re-create the shade.  Oh well.

Haboobs seem to be increasingly frequent, for example this excellent stop-action from last year.

Luche Libre

We worked with POC to arrange one last Dbacks game prior to All-Star break - PJ, CPG, PJr and I went Saturday evening, 7/7.  Big crowd - almost 37,000.  Dodgers are in first place, but they're not very good - especially right now, when their key guys are hurt.  Dbacks won handily.  Fun night - crowd was more alive than usual (perhaps because there was a goodly number of Dodgers fans keeping things stirred up).

And the give-away promo was original, and fun - "luche libre" - a form of pro wrestling - apparently they love to wear masks, as described here.  It was quite entertaining to see a big chunk of the crowd actually wearing these things.  POC stopped by with a couple masks for us (which was nice, since the "free to the first 15000 batch" was long gone by the time we arrived).  PJr seemed to like wearing the mask.  Prompting a grandmotherly-type in the row behind us to lace it up properly.

PJ even modeled the goods, as shown here.

It was a fun night. 

Birthday girl

We have lots of fine birthday photos of the kids.  So I think I'll start posting some at random on their birthdays.

Here's Kerry in 1988.  In addition to cake frosting appropriate to a birthday so near Independence Day, note the extra decorations she designed herself - Teddy Ruxpin characters.

Happy birthday!

U-S-A (4th of July post)

Here's something for the 4th of July - a video (at bottom of this post) that has to be one of the very finest renditions of our national anthem that we've ever seen (or heard, for that matter).

All finished.  A look of pride.  Or relief.

It was a Sunday afternoon game for the Diamondbacks during the interleague portion of the summer 2011 schedule - Chicago White Sox in town.  Sunday is kids day at the ballpark.  Meaning the team lets kids do various tasks, such as some of the in-game announcing, introducing the lineups and - best of all on this particular Sunday - singing the national anthem.

Yes, we've heard the anthem more times than we can count.  But there's something about this performance . . .

We were quite worried that this singer wouldn't make it all the way through.  I think the whole stadium felt that way.

But she seemed to pick up confidence as she went along.  And how about the (tenuous, then triumphant) moment when she goes for the high note (1:55 of the video).  You can feel the crowd responding at this point . . . almost exhaling collectively in relief, then quickly breaking into cheers and applause for our young performer.

I never get tired of this video.