I am in fact sitting in Miami airport reflecting upon the last week and writing my blog entry. We left Grenada a week ago yesterday and flew to San Diego for Gavin, (our son), and Katie’s wedding. It was just an amazingly wonderful family occasion. The wedding was like a fairy tale wedding at the Torrey Pines Lodge held outside in the early evening.

We had arrived on the Thursday, late but still went to meet in the bar at the Hilton as instructed. Many of the Bermuda visitors were in the bar with Gavin and Katie, except for my girls, Chrissie and Kate, Ivan – Chrissie’s partner and Ethan and Rhianna, they had flown in together, arriving an hour before us, and were supposed to drive a rental to the Hilton. Finally just when everyone was quite worried they turned up – the GPS had taken them to the Science collage. Bed finally at 1:00am – we were exhausted having left Grenada nearly 19 hours earlier. After that it was a crazy fast forward at a run most of the time. The pace of everything was quite shocking to our island time minds that are used to being very slowed down.

John and I, after a few room switches, had a room across from Kate and the Grand kids – Ethan and Rhianna. What with trying to keep up with and manage the kids, plus get to the mall with the girls and Ivan and then all the other expectations, the next thing we knew it was the Friday afternoon rehearsal.

                                          The rehearsal dinner at Pacifica

followed, for 61 guests, which was held at a lovely location in La Jolla. The next day the wedding preparations seemed to wiz by and before we knew it the wedding.

                                      The wedding

was a wonderful ceremony conducted by an old family friend of Becki and Don’s – Katie’s parents. It was on the lawn over looking Torrey Pines in the misty evening light.  From there we walked into the Lodge for drinks and dinner with some awesome speeches and excellent music, played by a very talented band, for dancing

      until midnight. It was a wonderful evening and night. A breakfast was held for everyone

on the Sunday morning before we all said goodbye and then Gavin, Katie and the kids were off to spend time in Orange County with Katie’s family and some of the Bermudian friends.

                                                    After the wedding:

The following days we spent with my niece Helen and her partner Martin – in from the UK, plus Chrissie and Ivan and Kate. We had many fun times doing the tourist thing around San Diego – mind you the girls and Ivan also managed to visit every mall at least 3 times if not more.

We all were very impressed with the area. The coast is just beautiful, the city easy to drive around with many places to visit. We stayed in a lovely small hotel, The Diamond Head Inn that was right above the beach and where all the action was to be found.

John and I particularly enjoyed driving north on Highway 101 and stopping along the way to walk some of the beach and along the cliff. It is very scenic with the deep blue skies, long rolling Pacific swells, brownish red cliffs the birdlife on the sands and the surfers riding the waves. The sands fascinated us; as in the sunlight they glowed as if made from gold. The sand must have flakes of fools gold or some other metallic flake.

Most evenings we all met up and had drinks and dinner. I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. Martin has a very keen sense of humor and along with Chrissie’s sharp whit, Helen’s and Kate’s remarks and sarcasm Ivan and John throwing in their 2 cents it proved to be extremely entertaining each night. We all spent a great day at the

San Diego Zoo.

None of us were overly keen to visit the zoo with the animals in captivity, but it proved to be very educational and they are doing a real service by having mainly animals that have been rescued or bred in captivity as their numbers are seriously endangered. Again being altogether for the day was the best part of the day for John and I.