Family Time

This past weekend was a family weekend, spent traveling to Vallejo for my nephew’s graduation from California Maritime Academy, one of the California State University system’s campuses located on the water of the San Francisco Bay area, and a beautiful campus with a quasi-military feel to it. We took two cars to the event, leaving from Santa Barbara and making the drive with time to spare before the 1:00 pm seating deadline: reserved seats were only held until 1:00, a half-hour prior to the formal ceremony. If you aren’t seated, anyone can take your seat – and we did so, sitting quite comfortably in the third row from the front.

After the graduation finished, we returned to the house in which my nephew and a few other new graduates lived. They are doing the typical “ready to move out” thing, with the couches going to the curb, the bathrooms in need of professional cleaning, and the rug someone else’s problem. The guys don’t care about things such as cleaning deposits because they are already paid with "gone" money and they are anxious to move out and move on. Now. Today.

It was a nice party, populated with more older adults than younger adults, and an on-going barbeque and smoker provided delicious meat treats to accompany the tables filled with salads and sides. Delicious food, nice company, and shared joy at the completion of this stage of the “children’s” development. Some of the grads will continue with their educational goals and others will go right into full-time employment, but all of them will move on, so having the grads, their families, and these friends together perhaps will not happen again, so lots of photos.

The photo I chose for this update includes my youngest brother, his wife, three of his four daughters (the fourth daughter was trying desperately to survive her final exams for the end of her first year at Harvard), the graduate (still partially in uniform), and me.

On the drive home, we stopped in Salinas to enjoy barbeque at Salinas City Barbeque, a small restaurant housed in an old family residence. The dinner was one of the best restaurant barbeque dinners I've eaten, including the sides (beans, cole slaw, potato salad, or a baked potato), the toasted bread freshly baked each day, and Ma's Homemade Berry Cobbler, which I took "togo." Believe me, the mixed raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and apples, topped with a cookie crust, didn't need the additional scoop of ice cream to add to its deliciousness.

I enjoyed dessert back at the family home, sitting outside on one of the benches set under a shady tree and basking in the glow of rehashing an excellent weekend vaca. Fair winds and following seas blessed us all.