Wedding bells at a Peruvian restaurant

Ray and Edith got married on July 4th. Pat and I have been helping by printing signs, locating and purchasing Peruvian wine and beer and other small tasks. Janet, Kevin and Carolyn joined us along with Ray, Edith and Edith's family with the pre-wedding set-up. We arranged the patio, decorated the restaurant, stripped roses for the petals and hung a piñata.

We were all taking notes, thinking about Janet and Freddy’s wedding in November. I’ve been considering taking the week before their wedding off, now I’m contemplating taking the entire month of November off! Just kidding, but there are so many details to be taken care.

Ray and Edith got married at Ay Ay Picante, a Peruvian Restaurant on Elston. The restaurant had never hosted a wedding before. The owner Jamie and his staff went all out to create a welcoming venue and wonderful food.

The best parts of the wedding for me were getting a new sister in-law, having kids home, spending time with Margo and Gabriel, talking with my cousin Dean and his wife Jane, and seeing Selso, an old friend and Gabriel’s brother. Below are some photos.

Janet, Mary Anne, Carolyn and Kevin.

Margo, Pat and Sandra with Jane and Dean in the second roll.

Edith and Ray cut the cake. Yes that's wheat grass surrounding the cake.

What's a wedding without Peruvian dancers?

Mom's 85th

Here are some photos. A grand time was had by many, if not all.

24 cars in ditches

The Barry-Monahan group made their way to Ypsilanti through some awfully snowy weather that created some pretty harrowing driving conditions. Grace reported that they saw 24 cars in ditches along the way. Most of the trip was spent in silence, but we did have some entertainment by Adam-having to pee so badly that he was sweating. Last night we had excellent steak tacos with a dessert of fruit tart and vanilla ice cream. As all Barrys do, we stayed up late talking- 11 Michigan time. then we woke to french toast, courtesy of Lori Starkenbarry we went out to Borders and the farmers market up there in Michigan. After that we ate some food at this...place. So as we were going out the door, Adam created the olive oil incident. Since Erin says its better with gestures, I won't tell you.We went home, read, Kevin got here, we ate a delicious dish called (unspellable) it was rice with bean goop and it was delicious. Cake and ice cream followed. And then we posted this. (written primarily by Grace)

Peace in 2008

After opening the presents and having a Christmas feast of tamales and more, Nanette and I and her parents took a walk along the coast, where we saw this "peace in 2008" sand sculpture, plus dozens and dozens of surfers.

I posted a bunch more photos on flickr.

Christmas Eve at the Rickers

Sean and I drove down to the Santa Cruz mountains yesterday afternoon to the home/horse ranch of Nanette's twin sister Bernadette and her family -- the Rickers. Here are some photos of the festivities. Captions to come.

The hosts were Bernadette and John and their two daughters, Mari and Teddy, and their three dogs. Also present were Lee and Elena, Nanette's two kids, the Tuckers -- Sonia (Nanette's neice) and her husband Mark and their kids Alex and Jason. That's Jason above with his great grandfather, Ted (Nanette's father). More later.

Rosarito Reconnaissance

This is a photo from the deck/balcony -- one of three -- in one of the two houses we visited near Rosarito, Mexico. I posted the rest of the photos here on flickr -- these are mostly from a place we visited in San Antonio del Mar, about four miles north of Rosarito, and 60 miles north of Ensenada. A little more than an hour from San Diego airport.

There are also a couple of photos from Ensenada, which is quite a nice place for a day trip -- for shopping, fish markets, wineries...

I'll write more tomorrow. The place is not perfect, but it's pretty nice, and seems to meet almost all of our requirements for a family reunion spot. And it's definitely in Mexico.

Here's the web site of the place. There's also a slide show (sort of long) with dozens more photos.

http://vacationrentalsbaja.com/index.html

And now Janet's home

The scientist from Sarasota flew into Midway Saturday evening and was only slightly delayed by the snowstorm. We needed to eat and Janet had a hankering for real Mexican food, so I suggested Atotonilco Taqueria on 47th west of Ashland, the flagship restaurant of the company that makes what I consider the best tortillas in Chicago (yes, better than El Milagro). So we moved slowly through the snow from Midway and had an egg torta (Janet) and egg or avocado tacos (Pam and me), with orchata or licuados to drink.

I wish I could say the food was great, as that's what I remember from when I discovered the place maybe 15 years ago, but it was just so-so, a bit dry and with big pieces of winter tomato that didn't make things better. And they were frying up a bunch of carnitas for the next day's
Sunday-noon traffic, which didn't make things especially appetizing for us non-carnivores. But the tortillas were good, very fresh (the factory is half a block west) and a bit crispy.

Now our own Sunday lunch, that was better. Pam made her famous chipotle potatoes with sides of green beans and avocadoes, and I fried up some Phil's free-range eggs. We cleaned our plates while Janet told Granny about her new concentration in cancer immunotherapy and Granny told us about her awesome immune system and her quick recovery from the recent stent placement in her leg.

That's two kids home with Kevin due to arrive on Wednesday, so Pam and I went to Dino's (now known as Devon Market) and filled up the shopping cart with wide variety of foodstuffs, just like in the old days when we had to feed five hungry people every day.

That's what I call fun stuff.

Carolyn comes home

Carolyn finished her last final at 8:45 p.m. Thursday and jumped into a speeding car driven by her friend Brenda, who had come to visit, and arrived on Newgard just before midnight. The next day, Brenda joined us for a celebratory dinner, when we enjoyed zitoni (those are the fat hollow noodles that could serve in a pinch as straws at a bubble tea shop), with tomato-basil sauce, fresh mozzarella, asparagus and sautéed collard greens. They regaled us with stories of their college adventures and we had a fine time.

After dinner they headed off to a JUMP Company dance show, then we got a call asking if we had certain baking ingredients in the house, then the doorbell rang at 11:30 p.m. because Carolyn had forgotten her keys, and then there was a great deal of laughter and cooking noises filtering up from downstairs. In the morning, we found a nice batch of cookies on the kitchen table.

The oatmeal-and-cocoa cookies came in four variations: chocolate chip, peanut butter chip, coconut-cranberry-walnut and chocolate chip-walnut.

And since Carolyn is the master of sandwich making, she invited Brenda and her sister Vicky over for lunch and made us each a grilled sandwich to our specifications.