Friday was our first full day with most of our wedding party in tow, and they very kindly followed me down memory lane to Santa Cruz and Capitola. Growing up I spent every summer in Sacramento with my family, and we always made a trip to Aptos to boogie board, ride the roller coasters, eat too much ice cream, and work on our fabulous Scandinavian Tans (that's a deep, rich, red hue for those of you who actually produce melanin and don't have to fret about such things). I very much wanted to take my almost-husband and my best friends to my favorite places and show off the part of the country that feels like home to me despite never having taken up permanent residence here. We collected our intrepid photographer Brie - who made her first solo flight for the occasion - and headed for the coast as soon as we finished up our marriage license paperwork at the Santa Clara courthouse. First stop was the Santa Cruz wharf, where we all ate fresh-caught fish until we felt like the fat lazy sea lions lounging under the pier.
After lunch, we all wanted to experience the gorgeous Boardwalk, but the early time of year and the massive quantities of food we'd just consumed made us leery of the roller coasters so we opted for the arcade and a round of mini golf. The guys beat the holy snot out of the girls, but Kaylee brought in the best score over all and her husband Allan hit a final hole-in-one and won a free round. We're all pretty terrible at mini golf, but we had a great time trying to get away with score-fudging (cheating is such a strong word...) and lying down to shoot pool when the balls got stuck in unfortunate places.
Lizzy, Kaylee, and Meredith, making trouble in a whole new state
Brie! This poor girl got straight off the plane and into our car. The rest of us got a night to sleep off the jet lag, but she just powered through!
Allan, Jeff, Kaylee, and the back of Meredith's head, trying to navigate the obstacles in the black light room on the golf course. I can't overstate how terrible we all are at this game, or how much of a blast we had being terrible together.
Kaylee won the award for Most Creative Shot with this one. Some of those obstacles are just mean!
The beach bums among us got our feet wet despite the cold, cold, COLD wind.
The Boardwalk! One of my very favorite places.
We went to Capitola at dinner time and coincidentally arrived in the middle of their monthly free art walk, but we were pretty focused on Beach and Bars by that point so it only got a cursory glance. Zelda's had some sketchy food reviews, but the drinks were fabulous! We got to watch a couple of very bold seagulls steal leftovers (and in one case, an entire packet of butter, foil and all) off of the busing table behind us. We braved the beach one more time, but not even the toughest among us would get their feet wet by the time the sun went down.
Believe it or not, this is Rob BEFORE the drinks arrived. We may have been a little bit tired.
After we got back to our hotel we talked through the ceremony with our newly-arrived officiant and final party member, played a couple rounds of Cards Against Humanity, and crashed early to get ready for the big day!
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