The dream continues

One last continental breakfast, one last ride on the bus, one last ride on the BART, two more rides on a plane, one more ride in the car to pick up our squeezable kiddos, & a return to my favorite place to be: home. It really started 14 years ago...

led us to this beautiful Sacrament...

pulled us through lots of new adventures...

& still keeps me smiling today. Thank you, Darren, for protecting, providing, caring, encouraging, guiding, & loving me. Thank you for being a fantastic father. God has blest me with you. I hope we get to celebrate many more decades together!

California Dreams - Day Four

I loved our room's little sitting area by the balcony. I spent good time here reading 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' by Willa Cather. It was a great book & seemed so fitting to the setting. The small mission parishes that we visited felt like we were seeing parts of the story. Our drive back down through the mountains was so different on Highway 101. Still incredible vistas but now with vineyards, open fields, & valleys. The lack of pouring rain helped make it even more gorgeous, too.

Hello, again, San Francisco! After dropping off our car, we hopped on the bus down to Mission Dolores. The Mission San Francisco de Asis is both the oldest building in San Francisco & the only remaining original mission founded by Blessed Junipero Serra in 1776.

The Church next door was destroyed in an earthquake & rebuilt years ago. Both were unique.

Inside the old mission where they still celebrate Mass.

The "new" Church is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows.

There were carvings on the wall of each of the Seven Sorrows.

We could also walk through the cemetery where over 5000 parishoners are buried from the native Chinua indians to the earliest of immigrants to many of the priests who gave their lives here.

It was incredible to be there & stand where the many martyrs before were. The view from our hotel window included many building top "yards".

One more stroll down that crazy Lombard Street

We were pretty tired of travelling at this point, so we just walked down a few blocks to an Indian buffet for our last dinner in California. I'm a big buffet fan especially with foods that I don't know very well. I rediscovered gulab jamun as a delicious dessert that our friend Anand made for us years ago. Definitely getting that next time we're at The Oven. We headed back to the hotel & laughed watching 'Man vs. Food'. Hilarious. Not hilarious enough for us to ever get cable, but fun entertainment for us both to enjoy.

California Dreams - Day Three

We woke up to a lovely breakfast & beautiful weather for our anniversary. We headed just down the road to the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree. Can't resist all the tourist traps, right? For $6 we squeaked our rental car through this enormous tree.

This is looking up from inside the tree.They had quite the array of both informational sites & fun carvings.

This treehouse was pretty incredible; mainly because there were only tiny additions of lumber & instead it was just carved out of the tree. There were even carved spices & books inside.

I crawled my way up a skinny flight of carved stairs to peer out the top.

This sign kind of summed up how amazingly old these trees are. Click on it to zoom in & read. To think it was over 1000 years old when Jesus was born!

We drove further down the Avenue of the Giants to the Visitors' Center. We didn't see ALL this wildlife (alive) but I was excited to spot a blue heron, a bald eagle, more deer, & a variety of birds. I'm not too sad that we didn't see a brown bear or a puma while hiking!

At Founder's Grove there is a good group of old stand redwoods. At the Founder's Tree

Can you really call that dead?

The Dyersville Giant and the hole it left in the forrest top when it fell. They said that someone a mile away heard it fall & thought it was a train wreck. Big Tree.

Back to the Avenue Cafe for a pizza lunch & more window shopping. There were wood carvings everywhere. We ventured in to the metropolis of Garberville (900 people) that evening. Our Lady of the Redwoods is a mission parish only open on Wednesdays & Saturdays. Lucky us! We were able to make a Holy Hour & attend Mass for the feast of Sts. Peter & Paul. I was hoping for Confession as well, but the poor priest was asleep at the back of Church! We could hear him snoring from our pew. We found out later his other parish is on the opposite end of the county. Driving through those roads day after day would make anyone tired. He was so kind & reverent (when awake), though. ;) We met him after Mass & he sent us away with a book, Divine Mercy picture, & a special anniversary blessing.

We enjoyed dinner at Sicilito's. Sound fancy? Not so much. Check out Larry, Moe, & Curly in the background.

It was such a peaceful & fun anniversary day.