teresa

Logging on from Vail I would like to capture some of my memories.

First off many things have come to mind that believe it or not I did not manage to fit into my recent wordy posts.  Two moments I will never forget at the wedding were on separate occasions when Brad and Russell came up to me and wanted to genuinely welcome me into their family.  They said they were so happy that Elliott and I were together and that they wanted me to know that they were happy that we were married.  This made me feel so welcomed into the Goodwin family.

Reflecting on an older post we have now flipped the outlook of in a week from now, which has become a week ago we were… at the rehearsal, and tomorrow that will be a week ago we were married!

For a honeymoon update things are perfect.

Ok not everything is perfect, the hotel was a little rocky at first.  The key didn’t work, we had to return to the lobby and when we did get in we couldn’t find the bedroom (sounds ridiculous but true).  They didn’t deliver the luggage because we ‘didn’t give them our room number’…  The shower takes awhile to warm up (which I feel is karma telling me to save water and energy by taking short cold showers… an inconvenience I have not yet adopted in my efforts to reduce my personal footprint).  The maids are emphatic about cleaning and turn down services which we have finally remedied with the do not disturb sign.  And there is a detector of some sort probably smoke that blinks all through the night above our bed. 

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I am not sure if at this point I will even be able to remember all of the great times I had on our wedding day.  Although I would like to give it a shot.

If you read my previous blog you know I stayed up pretty late, could not get to sleep.  I woke up before my alarm.  I showered and washed my hair which as the girls may know some hair stylists suggest coming in with dirty hair but my stylist said feel free to wash my hair.  I laid out all of the things that Elliott needed to bring to the site and left him notes regarding the different piles.  I finished packing my bag, retrieved my dress from the closet, and headed to my car.  I was to pick Krista up at 9:30, I think I left the house at 8:30, I couldn’t sit there any longer!

I went to Denica’s for a pumpkin muffin, one of my most favorite treats!  I sat in my car and ate it as slow as I could and finally called Krista and asked if I could come by early.  She said some family was near the pool having breakfast so I could say hi to everyone.  I waited outside of the lobby waiting for her to make sure Elliott was not in sight.  I remember a guy walked by and said, “you can go in” with a pompous grin, he didn’t realize I wasn’t nervous because they would find out I wasn’t a guest I had bigger nerves.  I caught up with the Kulesza’s and Goodwin’s and saw some other friends too. 

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Night before the wedding….

Well you can be sure the house is picked up and everything is organized!  I thank Elliott for his patience with my neuroses lately.  I believe my grandmother said there’s a place for everything and everything in its place.  Well that has been me the last few weeks.  I have been busy busy organizing.  From the spice rack to the book shelf everything is clean and orderly.  In fact I am doing laundry right now, that is how sick I am.

Today we had a wonderful picnic with our family and friends at Emeryville.  It was a little entertaining because Elliott and I are in shorts and t-shirts because it has been 90 degrees in Pleasanton the last few days and as we are driving out to the Marina Park in Emeryville getting closer and closer to the water Elliott realized he didn’t bring a jacket (neither did I), and he always has a jacket, so much so that I often tease him and call it his man purse.  We got out of the car and burr it was cold and the wind was just blowing.  We sat at some picnic tables and I finally wrapped myself up in a blanket I was so cold….  Finally someone, Kaye or Debra suggested we try the other side of the peninsula to get out of the wind.  After a couple of moves we did finally make it to a group of tables that was blocked just perfectly.  We didn’t have the same view of the city and bridges, but at least the weather was quite pleasant.  We enjoyed a snack and watched the kids get to know each other, which was perhaps one of my favorite parts of the picnic.  Its funny not being a mom because you are no where near as cautious as the parents.  At one point I saw a bridge so I suggested the kids go over to throw rocks and sticks off the bridge (which went to a boat dock).  The parents stood up straight and all separately and without coordination were concerned that the kids could slip through the guardrail and fall into the water.  Horrible but that didn’t even cross my mind as I round up the kiddies to run out onto the foot bridge.  But I guess that’s what aunts are for.

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Well my last post made the pre-wedding planning sound a little drab so I thought I would touch on the positive.  Elliott and I have enjoyed some great dates lately.  One night Elliott let my spur of the moment ideas plan the night and it was one of our best dates ever.  I think we ate dinner at home as part of our recent efforts to eat better, eating at home you can eat healthier and we have really enjoyed the time together in the kitchen.

Then I had read about a yogurt place in the Diablo magazine that I wanted to try and I also saw something about a Belguim beer spot so I added both to our places to go list.  Elliott agreed to check out the yogurt place with me which is in Berkeley.  As we were headed to Berkeley we realized we could also go to theatre where we could catch a flick that we haven’t seen yet.  You see we go the movies so often these days that we have seen nearly all of the movies at the neighborhood theatre.   However there is an off beat theatre in Berkeley, Shattuck Cinema that was playing Son of Rambow which looked pretty good.  We drove by the yogurt place on the way, couldn’t find parking and because Elliott insists on getting good seats and seeing every preview we didn’t get yogurt because we were pressed for time.

The movie theatre was totally cute.  Elliott really liked the ceiling in the lobby, .  I really liked the popcorn, they had 4 flavors of powder to sprinkle on top including white cheddar and ranch!  The theatre had no more than 50 seats, very intimate.  The movie itself was really well done, much more enjoyable than some of the bigger name movies we have seen recently - I swear we so many movies I think we should be movie critics.

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Elliott and I fulfilled one on my wishes - to participate in the Muddy Buddy.  I saw an ad for it years ago and always wanted to try it.  This year I finally had a buddy and some mountain biking experience, plus we live 45 minutes from one of the races so we were able to pull it off.  It is a 6 mile race where 2 buddies work together.  One buddy starts out running when the other buddy bikes, at the end of each mile the buddies switch and the other buddy runs or bikes.  At each transition there is an obstacle course, you kind of feel like you are on American Gladiators, which is cool!

We used Elliott’s bike which worked fine except his breaks squeal like a mother so everyone could hear my lame self coming down a hill riding the breaks like a sissy!  I did get off the breaks quite a bit and passed a lot of the girls who ran by me on the running legs.  We tied gold ribbon to the bike so we could find it and it had our number on it too.  Elliott had the misfortune of starting on the bike and had to climb this horrible hill the entire first leg.  He said he stayed on the bike the entire time and didn’t walk it which was impressive.  It got a little hot around the middle of the race which took us about an hour. At the end you have to crawl through a mud pit on your belly.  I had no idea how hard this final piece would be.  We didn’t do it the sally way on hands and knees either, we dug in and sloshed our way through the mud, it was tiring and awesome all at the same time.

At the end we were caked with mud from neck to toe.  We followed the mud stream to the hoses where the buddies washed off.   I felt kind of bad about this part because the wasted water was immense.  But we cleaned off and then changed into our clean dry clothes at the car. 

We enjoyed a beer at the beer garden and enjoyed the line of guys watching the tail end of the girls who were still coming through the pit. They start everyone in waves, guy teams, coed teams and the women teams.  I think this system was designed by a man who wanted to watch all the ladies coming through the mud while encouraging them from the beer garden.  If the girls were crawling hands and knees the guys taunted and yelled at them to get on their bellies, if the girls complied they were met with cheers, it was rather entertaining.  After that we collected some swag and then went our way, what a great way to start a Sunday.

Next year we want to get our friends to do it with us and we can have more muddy buddies.

We posted our pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elliottgoodwin/sets/72157605506646408/ but we don’t have any of us really muddy because it would have been impossible to hold the camera without ruining it, but hopefully the race photo people can read our muddy bib numbers and send us legit muddy photos soon that we will share soon.