Another marvelous weekend has flown by. The entire "gang" got together to celebrate Christine's birthday/graduation up in Big Bear! Happy 22rd Birthday to you Christine! I hope you had a fabulous time. The entire "gang" consisted of the Fortmanns (Dan, Cindy, Mike, Brian and Christine), the Reinzuchs (Luann, Kirk and Kirk's girlfriend), the Colantonios (Franco, Viviane, Arnaud, Sandra, Isabella, and Jessica) and the Bonewalds (Robert, Hayden and Connor). I cannot even remember the last time that we all got together the way we did this weekend. Let's just leave it at quite a few years (too many really).
The weekend went as follows:
My parents came to pick me up at 8am on Saturday morning. We stopped at Starbucks to have a quick little pick me up to start the trip. We then drove to Los Angeles to pick up Arnaud and Isabella. From there, we took the 18 through Apple Valley and made our way up to the lake. The drive was quite nice since we didn't have to sit on the freeway at all, and going up the mountain from this route takes about 20 minutes! Isabella started getting fussy towards the end, a good pair of ear plugs would have been nice. But we arrived around noon in time to enjoy hours of fun in the sun. The boys often went out on the boat, Christine opened birthday presents throughout the day. Time always seems to fly by when we are up there, before we knew it we were preparing appetizers and drinks and cooking dinner. For appetizers we had a hodgepodge of finger foods and toasted to Christine with Asti and Chambord. For dinner we had homemade lasagna and sangria. Then for dessert Christine had made an assortment of cupcakes (chocolate mint upside down cupcakes, lemon poppy-seed butterfly cupcakes, ice cream cones filled with brownies and whip cream, and cheesecake cupcakes.) To try to work off dinner, many of us went to the TV room and played Christine's Wii. I never thought I'd ever see my Dad play the Wii, and the bowling game at that! I wish I had a picture of it.
Sunday came around all too quickly. The boys went out early in the AM to get some wake boarding in. While the rest of the group lounged around the house, enjoying the view of the lake, and getting lost in one's own thoughts (OK that was me, never mind). So many activities were going one....wake boarding, kayaking, jacuzzi, etc. My dad had made crepes for breakfast, then we all prepared the leftovers and had that for lunch, and for dinner we had all American food consisting of homemade burgers and salad! (Christine and I took it one step further and made ourselves "protein style" burgers wrapped in lettuce instead of bread ;-) .) By 8pm the house was cleaned up and we all had to leave , unfortunately.
Who knows when we will all be able to get together again...but I hope it is soon. in the meantime we will always have this weekend to remember just how life should be, in the summer.
