Jessica's Wedding!

Jessica Patrolia and Cole Robinson were married on Monday, August 4th 2008 at 5:00 in the evening at the Sheraton Sand Diego Hotel and Marina. It was a beautiful, clear evening, and the ceremony was held on the marina deck, with a lovely view of the sunset. The ceremony was performed by Jessica's Uncle.

While Jessica, Lee and I were upstairs, here are some photos of the guests waiting in anticipation for the ceremony! :




Jessica was escorted and given away by her mother and father :o)




Jessica and Cole wrote their vows, and it was so touching to watch them share them. I admit! I cried! (no surprise) It was harder to hear Jessica's voice than Cole's voice, but you could feel very much the love that they have for one another :o)
During the exchange of rings, Jessica had a little difficulty putting on Cole's ring :o) (that is pretty difficult, and everyone is watching too!)





Here are photos of family and friends with the lovely new couple! :-D




Lee and I were witness on the marriage license, so trust us, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson are officially married! :-D Cole looks pretty happy! :o)
I had to put these two pictures in:
Cole was loving his shiny shoes......and Jessica looks so happy!

There was a delicious dinner and wonderful dancing at the reception directly after the ceremony. The food was amazing and it was so much fun to visit with friends and family and share in Jessica and Cole's special day. My favorite part was when people would tap their glasses and Jessica and Cole would kiss! I had never seen that before! I think there was planning involved to get the tapping going right as they took a large bite of food ;o) he he he he...

After dinner, they had the cake cutting:

They were both well behaved :o)
Then...there was dancing!
Here are some more pictures of the dancing:



It was pretty hot in that room after a while, and so it was nice at times to get some air on the patio. Jessica's dress was really hard to dance in, so it was nice for her to be able to go outside and breath! And, it was such a lovely sunset :o)



It was so wonderful to be with Jessica and Cole as they were getting married. What a wonderful couple, and how happy they will be together. :o)

And here they are, starting the very first day of their happily ever after :o) WE LOVE YOU GUYS!!

Wedding preparations :o)

The day we got into San Diego, we went to a bonfire that Jessica's daddy was putting on for the family and had dinner, played games, and visited. It was so nice to visit with Jessica and Cole and Lee and Jessica's Mommy and Sterling, it had been SOO LONG since we had seen each other and been in the same place at once! It was a lot of fun. We tried to play volley ball for a while (failed pretty miserably but had a lot of fun) and then sat down and watched other people play until it got too dark. Then, it was time to start the bonfire, roast marshmallows and talk, while we waited for the fireworks (we were right across the bay from Sea World and their fireworks, so we got to watch those! HooRay!). Sterling took Jessica's little cousin "fishing" in the bay, and yes, they did catch itty bitty fish with their hands and she was soo excised.

The next morning, the day of the wedding, Lee, Jessica, and I went out to get a few last minute things for the wedding, and, most importantly get Jessica's nails done! :-D That was a really fun adventure, Lee and I perused the bridal magazines and picked out hair styles for Jessica while Jessica got to be a princess! There were like, 4 or 5 people working together on her hands and feet :o) It would have been perfect if they had tipped her back and put some cucumber slices on her eyes :o)

Then the three of us (and the Garmend) set out in search of flowers for the center piece and bouquet. It was pretty funny--and pretty stressful--to find the flowers and not get lost and stop by all the houses we needed to and find everything we needed AND make it back in time to rush to the beach house and finish making the centerpieces (and enlist the help of the boys in our preparations) and then pack the bags and the dress stuff and hurry to the hotel and check in and get into the rooms and get Jessica ready---*WHEW!* Its a lot just thinking about! The comic relief was provided, chiefly, by the Garmend, and MAN am I glad that we had that little packet of GPS joy with us :o)...and that Lee was driving (she is so calm :o)

The only sad event of the day was that THE GUY AT THE CHECK IN AT THE HOTEL PLACE BROKE JESSICA'S BOUQUET! :-O oh NO! ..man...that was pretty much... NOT fun at ALL. He accidentally tipped over the vase that the flowers were in and it shattered and crushed the pretty flower petals and I think he wanted to crawl very quickly under the closest rock that he could find :o(

Everything was ok though pretty much and nothing had been torn or cut, so, we went up to the room and started to get Jessica ready!! We were a little pressed on time, Jessica looked incredibly lovely and the only thing that would have made the preparations perfect would have been if we had had more time to do Lee's hair.

Then, they came and got Jessica, we went downstairs, and the ceremony began! I will tell you all about it in the next blog, so keep reading!

Here are some pictures from the preparations:

The bouquet!
See? Even close up you cant really tell that they were smashed, although they were never quite the same after being dashed to the floor! Jessica picked these flowers from a fresh flower stand that we drove all over to find and we put it together for her! I am glad that they turned out pretty, because Jessica is a princess and we wanted her to have pretty flowers! :-D
And here are the center pieces that we made. We had an assembly line down to make these bad boys :o) We were pretty much a well oiled flower making machine towards the end of it. Leaves were flying, stems everywhere, tape going like crazy...Don't worry. No one got hurt in the cross fire. ;o)
On a closing note, Mark, during most of this, was not with us girls, he was with the boys! He was tasked with helping get Cole ready and to the hotel as well :o) Man oh man is a wedding a lot of rushing! ;o) But lots and lots of fun! :-D

San Diego or Bust!

Now came the leg of the trip where we high tailed it down to San Diego .... for Jessica's wedding! :-D How exciting!!
We headed out on Sunday morning and drove drove drove. We listened to the conference talks while we were driving, we were sad to not go to church and drive on sunday, but we were glad that we had stayed the extra day with Mark's Grandparents so we toughed it out.


On our way out of Reno, the first thing we saw was the new interstate they are building!

oooo....aaaaaaah....prettttyyyyy.....

I have always wondered how they built bridges to top hills...this is how!
Here is a close up of the bridge! It was MASSIVE. And I am a sucker for building bridges so I took a lot of pictures, but I will only make you suffer through these two. BUT IT IS SO COOL! :-D (I hope you appreciate it...) It is a pretty impressive sight to see the new road snaking through the desert, and to think of the intensive effort that was required to create the roads that are so vitally important to our way of life now. Way to go civil engineers! And way to go pre- stress concrete! You are the coolest too! The stuff people think up...brilliant...

We got to pass through some really pretty land on the way down to San Diego...and some not so pretty land ;o) For those of you who have traveled this way, you know what I mean. The rest of you soon will! Lets start with the pretty stuff:



We started out weaving through beautiful mountain roads and pine trees, and we passed the most beautiful mountain lake. It was really pretty hilly through this piece of the trip, which was fun to drive but bad on the car. When we came to the lake, you climb up and up and up and then BAM! There is the lake! :o) And then you get to wind around and down and up and take pictures the whole time :o) At the top of the hill on the other side of the lake we stopped for gas. Drum roll please: (da da da da da da da....) $5.24 a gallon!! OUCH!! :-O That is by far the most we have ever paid for gas, and I think next time we will plan on NOT buying gas in a tourist town, next to a big lake, at the top of a really big hill, in the middle of no where :o) (I think the location and the price maaaaaay be connected)

It then got a little more dry and desserty, and the mountains had less large alpine like trees, and we got to drive by..MT. WHITNEY!! :-D(I kept missing the sign of the official title of the mountain, so I took a picture of this little motel so that we would remember the name of the mountain we passed....)

and here is the MOUNTAIN!The main reason this is cool is because my little sister goose has a best friend named Whitney and I think that Whitney is totally the coolest in the world too, and there is a MOUNTAIN named after WHITNEY! :-D I MEAN HOW IS THAT NOT TOTALLY COOL?!?.... I don't see many "Mt. Teandra" out there after all....anyway...*cough cough*

The next leg of the journey got preeeetty dry...and really, really hot. This was worsened since we don't have air conditioning, so we were enjoying ourselves with the windows rolled down trying to keep from melting :o)

Here are some cool pictures from the dry part:


We drove by a place called (I think) "Devil's Backbone." I think it should have been called "Devil's Infernal Kitchen" since it felt like a sweltering oven. Speaking of warm and fuzzy places to drive through we also drove through Death Valley (very close to Devils Backbone. Ironically since they are so opposite in elevation) which is the lowest, driest and hottest valley in the United States. It is also the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below sea level, and it holds the record for the highest reliably reported temperature in the Western Hemisphere (information courtesy of Wikipedia ;o). In other words it was hot HOT HOT! :-D

Now what should lie in this pleasant waste land...but Edwards Air Force Base! :o) Mark interned there a few summers ago and he LOVED it. But man, does the government pick the BEST places to build stuff, or what?! ;o) Me and Mark have found that the cooler the stuff you want to do...the crappier the place you have to live to do it :o) Who Knew!

We didn't drive next to the air force base, one, becasue you cant get close to it and see anything, two, because it was a bit out of the way, and three (probably most importantly at the time)...it was really, REALLY hot. :o(


Here are some cool shiny things we took picture of...


and some close ups of the shinny things!

There is a strip in the Land that EAFB has that is a really long, flat, hard stretch of nothingness that they used to test cars and rockets and other things like that. Mark says that is where they have the races where they break the sound barriers, and test lots of cars, and, oddly enough, where they shoot a lot of car commercials :o) (so if you see any cars driving through the desert on T.V. and they magically look like it is a lot of fun...probably shot at this stretch...and let me tell you, it was stikin hot when they shot the picture) Anyway, the stretch is home to more than just dry nothingness. Oh yes. Apparently there are desert turtles and tortoises in the area that may wander into the stretch. When this happens, no one can remove the said turtles under any circumstance. Oh no, you have to call the appropriate professionals to drive out and remove the turtles for you. This turtle removal procedure requires official training that Edwards Air Force Base is required to give, and that Mark was recipient of :o) hehe! How funny! You get some pretty cool training on internships, but I think that tops the list :o) Mark and his friends also have a very interesting event that took place on this stretch...involving high speeds and pot holes...but I will leave that tale up to him to tell ;o)

From there on out it was a pretty straight shot to San Diego and We made it to the beach house that Jessica's Mom had rented and graciously invited us to stay with them at with little pain! It involved SEVERAL phone calls to Jessica and lots of moral support to wind through the tiny little side streets...but we made it! HOORAY! It was so fun and I will tell you all about it soon!

Mark's School!

Welcome to Mark's Elementary school! :o) Mark attended Catherine Dun elementary school. He was a little Cougar! (awww how sweet! ;o) ) Here is a shot of the front...


and some of the side yard.....


and the swings!! :-D

When it rained, or when the snowed melted, there would be "super big puddles" under the swings. Which, for a little boy, translates to a whole lot of fun ;o) Mark said he and his friends would swing really, really high and then SPLASH! their feet into the puddles! :-D He says he remembers the teacher getting really upset once or twice...but he didn't care enough to stop doing it :o) It was the BEST he said. Mark and Michael had the same sixth grade teacher, Mr. Wilson.

Mark LOVED all the grass on the playground, he said that he always played soccer or football at recess. He said that in grade school, one of the favorite things that he did was went on a cool trip... to San Diego! The went to several museums and stayed at an old military base on the cliffs of San Fransico Bay and they went to Alcatraz and to a cool aquarium, Mark's Mom got to go with him too! :-D
And, here is the cool sign! Have a great summer! We sure did! :-D

The House In Reno

On our way over to Mark's grandparents house, we stopped by Mark's old house. :o) My how things had changed!
There was no fence, and less flowers. LOTS less flowers. There were also no window flowers. And there was no driveway on the right ride. In essence: there used to be more grass :o) and mark, LOVES grass. LOTS of grass :o) He was pretty devastated to see the changes (I think it looks pretty!)


Here is a close up of the house. And here is a tree in the front yard that they planted! :o)

Mark liked living in this house :o) Mark's mom said that he was always outside more than inside, and always wanted to be outside more than inside to play. His brother Michael liked to play inside with his toys...and Martin liked to go between the two :o) Marks Mom also said that Michael and Mark liked to try and convince each other to do what the other person wanted to do :o) Boys will be boys!

In the Land of Mark...

Growing up, Mark and I each enjoyed imagining magical lands where we could live and have adventures, like in Lord of the Rings or Narnia or some other fantastical land :o) While my family may still like to tease me about "Teda Town," a decidedly nonfantasy land where the roads have spikes to enforce trafic laws, a feature targeted at "bad" (non-me) drivers, I still can remember thinking of other fantastical lands, too wonderful to be real, that I would love to go and have adventures in.

While, to date, neither of us have lived in another world or have had centaurian neighbors or talking pets, we each have "magical" places in our childhood that we like to reminesce about.

While Mark has many such special childhood places that exists in "The Land of Mark", this blog is dedicated to a specific special place we had the pleasure of visiting this sumer : his grandparents house in Reno.

When Mark was 8 years old his family relocated to Reno for his dads work. They left Lafayette on the 6th of January, his dad drove the moving truck and mark and the boys and mom (becky in her tummy) rode in the motor home with Grandma and Grandpa Coates. Mark LOVED the road trip out; the best way to travel, according to mark, is in the back of your grandparents motor home...with video games :o) When they got to Reno they lived with Marks grandparents for about 5 months while they were looking for a house (and that is where Becky was born!) and when they did move, they almost moved into a different house far far away from gradma and gradpas house, but as fate would have it, they lived only a few minutes away from their house so they got to see them all the time! :o)

And HERE is Grandpas house! :


Grandpa lived on Gross Ranch as a foster child through his teenage years and is one of the only foster children that stayed around and worked on the ranch and was treated as one of the family throughout his life. He woke up in the morning and milked and took care of the cows before school everyday and took care of them when he came home too. While the "Ranch" around the house has vastly changed into a housing development, THIS is the house that grandpa grew up in on the original ranch! My goodness! Grandma bought the house from nanny and grandpa (not marks grandpa David Coates :o) this is "grandpa" George Gross:o) ) in February of 1956. Grandpa Coates has lived in it ever since! That is some of the original rock work on the house that they used from stone in the area, and grandpa used some of the left over rocks to do a beautiful rock fireplace inside the house. The house has changed a lot from the one grandpa grew up in, grandpa did a lot of remodeling, but this is pretty much just exactly how Mark remembered it growing up :o)

One of the most IMPORTANT aspects of the house to Mark is the back yard wonderland!


Mark remembers playing out in the yard and swiming in the little coy pond that they had. It was so lovely to go and visit, and Mark said, "man! it used to be so much bigger" :o) We still havent decided weather the rocks and trees actually shrank...or if Mark grew....juries still out ;o)


There is a rock little "river" that feeds the coy pond, and mark remembers playing and making little dams in the water, and I believe he said that he used to swim also in this little river, and that there was a little water wheel in it also :o)

And the coy pond Mark swam in! I don't think that he would fit in it now ;o)



This is one of my favorite part of the yard was this area under the tree. Mark said that he spent lots of afternoons playing around this tree also.


He also remembers a swing on the porch! His siblings and cousins would sit on that swing when they were young and get swinging really high. Behind the swing was a metal fence that made a wonderful gong and crash when you swung into it. This was the goal for many summer afternoons for the young hooligans.

In the front of the house there was a big, big pine tree. From the outside it looks like any other unassuming pine tree, but once you got beneath the canopy of the needles... you saw it was really a magical climbing tree! Grandpa had cultivated the inside, cutting away the inner branches and needles so that the inside was hollow! The branched were quite close spaced for really easily climbing! The effect was so amazing, and I can easily see why Mark has a love for that tree. Heck, I saw it as an adult, and I wanted to get up and play in the tree! It was so cool! :-D We didn't get any good pictures of the tree :o( But perhaps it is best to leave the wonder up to your imagination ;o)

In addition to his childhood, Mark got to live with Grandma and Grandpa the summer after he returned from his mission, working and having a lot of fun. I got to try some of grandma's delicious raspberry Jam that Mark is always talking about as his favorite and see the house that he loves so much and the people that make it what it is: his grandparents.


The best part of visiting were the stories that Grandma and grandpa told us about how they met and their courtship and some of the many adventures they had in their lives together. Grandpa told us also some of his conversion story and the difference the church made in his life. Grandma and grandpa are such wonderful people and showed us such love and kindness, it was so good to visit with them and hear about their lives. We also got to visit with Mark's Uncle Mark and Coleen and two of their children, Mark and Justin, Justin's wife Candice and their new son Vincent! It was really really nice. Mark and Justin are building a house next door to grandpas house, and we got to go and see it. We also got to see Grandpa sisters Aunt Dot.

We loved visiting so much, when we had packed up to leave and were driving in town...we turned back around, drove back, and asked if we could stay another day and postpone our trip :o) Gladly they allowed us too and we pushed back the rest of our journey by a day.

What a wonderful family and how grateful we are to have spent time with them, and got to retrace some pieces of Marks childhood! Living so near to his grandparents played a very important part of who he is, just as living close to my grandparents played a very important part in who I am! It was something we shared a lot on the phone when we were getting to know each other, about the places and people that were important to us, and it was good to go back and visit.

On The Road Again...Again... ;o)

Yep! You may have noticed that Mark and I are on the road....a LOT. So! After we packed up our house (thanks to the help of our guardian angels!) packed up the car (again, thanks to our angels!) we headed out to Reno!
We left later than we had anticipated (by about....6 hours :-O ) and so we had our first pit stop dinner at Wendys on our way out! Mark is so handsome!

Our boss at PNNL has a motor cycle and loves to drive around with his wife in the Washington/Oregon area; before we left we chatted with him about the route we were taking to San Diego. We decided to not go on the interstate, but to take 395. It wound up through the hills and the forest and stuff, it was a really nice drive :o) VERY beautiful. VERY remote.



It was very beautiful :o) The trees were SO tall and majestic, and the setting sun bathed everything in the most lovely light :o)

here is a funny story though :o) So! we were trying to make hotel reservations :o)We learned our lesson on the way to washington about driving all night so we decided we would get a place to sleep. Iwalani can do that sort of thing :o) so we thought, "OH! lets call nani! she can help us!" Oh man were WE being proactive or WHAT!

....oh no...

so we called nani, and she told us that we should call the choice hotel office ourselves and talk to them. so! we were in the middle of nowhere, weaving in and out of the hills, and in and out of service. When we called the company, we had to be on hold for a long time to talk to anyone, which was fine, and then when you were talking to an agent, you went though about 10 more minutes talking about where you were, where you were heading, what kind of room you wanted, etc. Then you had to give them your card number and wait for a confirmation number. I was waiting for the confirmation number when I lost connection! OH NO!! I called my sister, and she said that it is a rule, that if you don't give the people the confirmation number, then they HAVE to cancel the reservation so I needed to call them back. So I called back and waited on hold 3 times, and kept dropping the call before we got a hold of someone. Determined to talk to someone, we parked at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere and waited for like 30 min... before we decided we needed to get going. Finally I talked to someone and explained the situation to them and they checked to see if the previous reservation had went through. They said no, and so we proceeded to make another reservation. Again, after giving them my number, we lost connection. I texted my sister, and she said that she would just go online and make the reservations for us.

UNFORTUNATELY, when we arrived at the hotel...the helpful clerks HAD placed TWO reservataions for us, and the check in lady didnt know how to cancel one of them witout being automatically charged for it. OH NO! So they charged us twice, and my sister for not being there when she made the reservations ..oh NO! but, after making several phone calls, everything worked out :o) BUT! Mark and I decided that we were not "reservation" type of people on road trips anymore :o)

In addition to the hotel mix-up deterring us from making reservations, we also decided we're not "reservation" people so that we can stop where ever we want when we're tired. Poor Mark and I were driving REEEEALY late, in the middle of nowhere, to try to get to that hotel with our reservations. We saw a lot of deers while driving that long, looong night. I had heard about people hitting deer with their cars and people in my family have hit deer with their cars, but I, thankfully, had never had that pleasure. Mark and I got to see deer MUCH closer to the car than we wanted, and we almost hit a few (pretty scary). We even saw one in a TOWN, and almost hit that one too! oh NO! Man...you know you are in the hills when you see bambi hanging out in the piggly-wiggly parking lot and it seems totally normal ;o) Sorry we don't have pictures, due to the surprise nature of the deer sighting situation ;o)


All in all, it was a lovely drive, and we would recommend it to people who are heading between Washington and Reno :o) Another perk, we got to pass through the 45th parallel, half way between the Equator and the North Pole!

Pretty sweet!


We also met a certain celebrity look alike... ;o)

I LOVE YOUR MOVIE MAN! ;o)


We also met a horsie! Mark got out to check the bikes in the rack that had come loose (they came off when we hit big bumps), and he came over to visit! It was the ONLY living thing we saw for MILES :o)
"hey mark come quick!"
"look! a horse!"
"...where?...""there! see? there is the horsie!!"

We drove and drove...and drove...and drove :o) When we crossed into California, it seemed like we were going into another country! They stopped us at the state boarder and even asked us if we had any fresh produce that were we're brining across.
...and don't you think this cloud looks like a monkey?!? :-D


a monkey with really long lips! :o) I couldn't help but take this picture :o)

and we drove, and drove, and drove some more...



... and then we were in reno!! :-D

We drove through the town a bit where Mark grew up and it was really lovely :o) We stayed with Marks grandparents when we were there in Reno, and it was wonderful. Keep reading and We will tell you all about it in another blog (this blog is much too long!) :o)