First-- John and I had our 25th anniversary trip scheduled for Oct.
Second--Nathan had become engaged to Jessica Hilliker at Christmas time 2008 and was going to get married in 2010 but they decided in the spring to change the wedding to Sept 2009.....our schedules now became more busy in many ways.
THE WEDDING:
I don't have a lot of photos yet of the wedding to share as some of mine are still on the roll of film waiting to finish and be developed....yes I used roll film....the kids were taking the digital camera on their honeymoon.
The wedding was to be next door to us outside in the back yard in the pine trees between our yards---Nathan was marring the neighbor girl- everyone would be facing our yard. Here are the guys a little before everything started. Chad (standing next to Nathan) was his brother's best man.
The scene for guest setting about a hour before everyone arrived. It was a nice sunny day and the wedding theme was tropical/palm trees but it was a bit cool out and by the end was not feeling tropical at all.
The happy couple after the wedding greeting guests...taking a brief moment here for a picture.The reception was at the fairgrounds and the kids took their honeymoon in Florida...continuing the tropical/palm tree theme.
They still live in Wellington now but with Nathan married it has caused us to adjust what we do here for farm issues as he will not be here for the day-to-day operations. We are still adjusting to that in what we want to do and not do and also trying to figure out how this will all work in the long run.
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THE TRIP:
Our trip was to go to Santa Barbara--the American Rivera . The reason for here was it had a Mediterranean feel to it but also it boasted of 92% blue sky days with the average temps being in the high 60' and low 70's. As it turned out, a storm moved in from the coast and it rained while we were there and the temps were cooler than normal. The last time it had rained there was about a year ago. Irrigation is the only thing that keeps everything alive. If you did see a green patch out in the farm land, it was probably hay and it HAD to be irrigated. We drove around the country side and saw no grass-fed beef anywhere..... the grass everywhere was brown.
We stopped at their year-round farmer's market and that was interesting seeing things you would never see here....like avacodos, oranges, lemons, several kinds of nuts...and yes they had California strawberries. We bought some and they didn't taste any better than the stuff you get in the stores around here. I felt sorry for them as they might never know what a real strawberry is suppose to taste like.
This is a pic of West Beach (Pacific Ocean), Santa Barbara and the mountains behind them. If you notice the mountians are not too green looking at all because they had had some wildfires up there not too long ago. When it rained, they were worried about mud slides. We now know why they have so many wild fires out there...no rain.
We found a little park above the city that gave us a very nice vista of the Rivera. We stayed here a good while and enjoyed the view, sun and the quiet. 
Santa Barbara actually faces south so you need to make an effort to see the sun set in the west. On a few different occasions, we went to a park on the west side and climbed down the cliff and watch people on the shore below, the activity in the water (which wasnt' much) while we waited for sunset. No irrigation here.....you can see the brown grass.....the green you do see are shrub like things.
Another end to a day. Sunset over the Pacific Ocean....the last of the sun for the continental US.
