Home Sweet Home – California and Minnesota

After a brief (but very fun) evening with friends in San Francisco, Andrew headed back to work in Tokyo and I headed back up to Sonoma county for a few days to spend with my in-laws. It was fun to take the ferry to Larkspur to meet my mother-in-law and then we had a really wonderful few days exercising, relaxing, watching the Warriors, and eating delicious food. The bridge was covered in fog for most of the ride but half of it decided to say hello right before we turned in towards Larkspur Landing:

On Thursday, I was on a plane yet again and bound for the Ruttger’s Bay Lake Lodge in Deerwood, Minnesota for a memorial for my grandfather who passed away last August.

My father spent his summers on Bay Lake at his family’s house, which has since been sold and renovated but still sits a few doors down from Ruttger’s. The Ruttger’s family hosted my great-great grandfather as the first guest of the Lodge back when it was founded in 1898 (a fun fact I learned while on this trip, which was my first to Bay Lake). I arrived around 3am local time and went straight to sleep. When I woke up to this view and to my parents and my siblings in the adjoining cabins, I knew this was going to be a good trip:

We kicked off the first day with breakfast at the house where my aunt, uncle, and cousins were staying and then rented some bikes to explore the area:

Clearly the tandem didn’t last very long and while my sister’s pedal fell off, some sneaky maneuvering got us each back in once piece. That afternoon we took off on the boat to say farewell to my grandparents.

It was a really beautiful evening and an emotional but enjoyable memorial. My grandfather’s childhood friend and kind owner of Ruttger’s, Jack, joined us as well:

The rest of the weekend we all spent relaxing and enjoying the ammenities that the Lodge has to offer: kayaking, golf, basketball, etc.

My aunt and uncle drove their speedboat from Wisconsin and kept to their habit of waking up with the sun to water ski each morning. I’m still unsure what timezone I was on but I was not waking up with the sun so my aunt was kind enough to take us out later in the day:

Mom went first and proved that she’s still got it (for the record, I’ve never had any doubts – love ya, mom). My brother then jumped in, quickly started to be a ham for the camera and impressively dropped a ski: I was last. I’m always a bit uncertain about water skiing – each year when we visit my relatives in Wisconsin it always seems like it’s been AGES since I’ve done it but it’s like riding a bike and I was up on my first try and had a blast (that is, until the soreness kicked in the next day).

 I didn’t want to leave my family but Tokyo was calling. After 36 hours of delays, and a reroute through San Francisco for a night, (thanks, United), I finally made it back to hazy Tokyo on Wednesday night:

(view from my room in San Francisco at the Park Central Hotel)

Home Sweet Home – California

Each year Andrew has a big internal conference that is normally overseas and for the last three years it has been in one of my favorite cities: London. We had booked our tickets back in February, which was before we knew we were going to Tokyo. Since our tickets were nonrefundable we figured it would be a good opportunity to spend some time with Andrew’s parents in Sonoma County:

My sister drove from nearby Yolo County to have dinner with us – it was great to have her with me even for a few hours.

Deer have become quite a nuisance on my in-laws property so we spent a few minutes watching my father-in-law in action with his sling shot trying to steer them away from eating up his garden! That action shot is one of my favorites (no deer were harmed, of course – it’s just a sling shot). We enjoyed a beautiful day hike around Spring Lake as well:

We rounded out our visit to Sonoma with a stop at the winery where we got married, Paradise Ridge. I posted a picture from here on instagram and our friends from San Diego saw it and were also in town so they joined us for some afternoon wine tasting at the winery, which was a wonderful surprise. While social media can often be distracting, I find it really amazing and I will continue to use it religiously for these little opportunities that reunite friends. A few delicious meals with family and two days later, we were off to London!