Part II of the Family Reunion

[If you missed Part I, you can read it here!]

On our first morning in San Diego my dad woke up early to go play golf with some of the men, and my mum and I were left wondering what we were going to do on a cloudy, cool day with no car. Luckily, my brother Brad saved the day by calling us and asking if we wanted to go shopping with him at Seaport Village, a super cute coastal cluster of shops and restaurants arranged like, well, a village.


We were pretty shocked that Brad wanted to take us shopping. Neither he nor any of the other men in my family have much "patience" when it comes to it. (Which makes me so grateful for L.!)

But, we should have known there was a catch. Sure, we were going shopping--but he really needed our help picking out prizes to give out at the giant reunion dinner that night. Ha! We should have seen it coming.

I suggested that we find fun, handmade things that hail from San Diego, as sort of a neat souvenir for our family, who hail from all over the country from places such as Upstate New York, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Chicago, and Colorado, and put them together in themed baskets. Brad really wasn't very helpful with this, and we couldn't find any baskets, so I ended up getting some cute ribbon from a hat shop (which I suspect is where all the girls go when they're going to Del Mar racetrack), and tied little bundles of like-things together. We ended up with a San Diego coffee mug stuffed with San Diego-made coffee, a mexican cookbook bundled with homemade San Diego hot sauce, and this really nice hand-painted San Diego tile.

At our dinner, which happened at 6pm that night, we handed out the gifts to the oldest relative, the relative who had contributed the youngest generation to the family (my cousin Leigh with her baby Kinsley won that), and the family member who traveled from furthest away (this might have been us, but we didn't want it to look rigged.)

But before the dinner, my mum and I got back to the room after our "shopping" outing and
got lunch at the Blue Wave Bar and Grill, the restaurant at the resort. We got to sit by the window and stare out at the harbor and all the yachts, which was really nice. Plus, I had the most delicious Cobb salad of my life, so I was a pretty happy camper.


After lunch, we decided to go in the hot tub. On Friday it was approximately 62 degrees in San Diego and cloudy--just an awful day. But we had fun relaxing in the hot tub and then I huddled, shivering, in a towel while my mum went swimming in the pool. She's crazy! (Okay, okay, it was actually heated to 80 degrees).

My mum and I got dressed and headed to the dinner, which was being held in the resort's Sunset Room, a gorgeous function room overlooking the harbor, to help set up. I offered to be the name-tag giver-outer and the money-collector, since the all-you-can-eat Italian buffet was running people a pretty penny. I joked that no one was going to talk to me the whole night for taking all their money!


Here was the view out the window, which you can see behind Scott, his girlfriend Angie, and Brian and Tiffany.


I think this photo of my mum and me at dinner is so sweet. Don't you love my dorky nametag? She refused to wear hers! What a rebel.

We had about 60 people at the dinner, and after everyone finished eating, each table had to stand up and explain which branch of the family they were from. It sort of took forever, but it was nice to be able to trace the line all the way back. And then, the big moment of truth:

Who was going to host the reunion in two years?
Drum roll...

In two years, I'll be going to:

!!!

I'll let you guys try to figure it out. It would be tricky for me, but those of you more familiar with the city will probably get it. It's somewhere that L. and I have been dying to go and even considered moving after graduation, and we were planning on making a big stop there on our cross-country road trip next summer when we move to California. But now we'll be going in two years, so we don't have to! (Which means more time in Vegas!!!)