the paquettes

Saturday evening was my cousin John’s wedding.  It was beautiful and so much fun to see all of my extended family again!

John’s wedding day

my cousins (there are 5 of us in this picture), and significant others From L to R:  Diane(c), Amanda, Matt(c), Alexis, John(c), Bryan, Shannon(c), me, and James

Here is me with John circa 1990.  You like the custom puffy painted shirts I made for all of us?  We were on a road trip from CA to MN and stopped at this Flintstone park! Shannon and Diane, John’s sisters, are next to him.  My brother and sister are below me.

On Sunday, we drove back to Huntington Beach where my grandpa lives and James went golfing with the guys. On Monday, before we flew home, James and I went to Huntington Beach to take pictures (again with the beach pictures!). James really wished he could of gone swimming in the ocean, but there just wasn’t enough time. This was the beach I grew up going to. I have fond memories of taking the OC Transit when I was a jr. higher and tanning all day at the beach with my friends. 🙂

This is me underneath the pier at the beach

James wishing he was surfing out there…

That red roofed restaurant at the end of the pier was where we were supposed to eat on Thursday night to watch the sunset.  Boo.

You don’t see this everyday in Texas!

James and I flew to southern California last Thursday for my cousin’s wedding in Paso Robles.  We wanted to make it a long weekend so we could call it our ‘getaway’ trip for the year and relax together.

Wednesday night, Ella came down with a bad fever.  We were already at James’ parents house so I slept with her, and needless to say, I didn’t get any sleep.  I’m exhausted on Thursday when we get to the DFW airport.  Our flight kept getting bumped and finally got cancelled on Thursday.  We scramble to get a new flight and can’t get one until late so we miss our plans of a sunset dinner at the beach.  😦  Tired and frustrated, we have to fly to Phoenix first (our cancelled flight was direct).  It is 111 degrees when we fly in and we have to take a bus to get to our gate.  Wouldn’t you know it, but our bus’ air conditioning was broken!  So, we were driving around in a sauna.  We finally get on the plane that will fly us into LAX.  When we board though, the airplane’s air conditioning is broken and it feels like everyone is sitting in a baked potato!  The pilot apologizes and we sit there extra so that they can ‘fix it’.  The plane didn’t cool off until about 45 minutes into the flight.  That was fun.  The guy next to me had sweat dripping down the side of his face.  We finally hit our bed at my grandpa’s house in southern CA at 11 p.m.  (1 a.m. Texas time).  We were supposed to arrive at 8:30 p.m.  Sigh. 

The next morning we have to leave at 8 a.m. to drive up 4 1/2 hours to Paso Robles.  We ride up with my cousin and her finance.  We are driving on the 405 for like 30 minutes and we get sideswiped in the HOV lane!  (I’m telling you, don’t travel with us, we are bad luck!)  The guy who hit us started evading us and darting in and out of the 6 lanes.  He exits but we get his license plate number.  So now we have been sideswiped and hit and run.  Lovely.  CHIPS came out and took all of our info. and later in the day he actually called us to tell us he caught the guy! 

The rest of the day was calmer and we went to my cousin’s rehearsal dinner and had a great time.  The next morning, we drove to Cambria, which is a cute little beach town by Paso Robles.  James agreed to take pictures on the beach as long as he could watch the U.S.A. play in the World Cup at a local restaurant.

at the rehearsal dinner

Cambria

picture taken by my cousin’s wife