Rain, rain, and more rain....

 7:34 am - Sunday - November 16th - Jurupa Valley, CA - 53° F, humidity 77%, wind 4 mph out of the northeast....cloudy, but no rain right now....forecast high today is 60° F.  On this date in 2013 TLE and I returned to SoCal for the first time in 21 months.  We were staying at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park, where we began our full time odyssey in February of 2011....

.....we were camp hosts there for a year, before we began our full time travels.  We had surprised our kids the day before by coming home a day early, so they returned the favor with a surprise of their own.  Many of the kids who we watched grow into adults with our kids for 20+ years began to arrive at our camp site unannounced, until there were over 20.....very, very cool!  One of the kids was Mike Fulton (on the left with a guitar), who got married last night.....since we were in town to see Tim, we were invited to his wedding.

We awoke to rain Saturday morning, and it continued raining, almost without interruption, all day long (the weather prognosticators call it an 'atmospheric river'), and it was still raining when we left around 3:15 pm to drive to Chino for the wedding of our son's good friend Mike Fulton to Courtney, but I get ahead of myself, as usual.  That was really a long 'run on' sentence....lol!

We had the heater in the travel trailer running a good portion of the day while watching NCAA college football.  There was a great game in the morning pitting Texas A&M (#3) against  unranked South Carolina Gamecocks.  At the end of the first half the Gamecocks, quite unexpectedly, led A&M 30-3.  It did not look good, but A&M came roaring back with 28 unanswered points in the second half to win 31-30.

In the afternoon my USC Trojans (#17) got off to a slow start, also, but came from behind to win 26-21 over the Iowa Hawkeyes (#21).  USC stands at 8-2 now, which is their best start in a long, long time.  They have an outside chance to get into the college football playoffs, but they'll have to 'win out' to have a chance, meaning they cannot lose either of their final two games this season against #8, Oregon (away), and unranked UCLA (home).

As I said, we left around 3:15 pm to make the 25 minute drive to Chino, where the aforementioned wedding was being held, and we arrived at the venue around 3:40 pm with the rain falling steadily.  This was to be a 'backyard' wedding, and the weather was not cooperating one bit.  Fortunately, they had erected two large tents in the backyard (which is enormous), so in spite of the inclement weather, the wedding guests were all kept dry.  Most weddings we have been to over the years (and you know what I mean) do not start on time (with the exception of our wedding...lol), and this one did not either.  In fact, it began 90 minutes late due to traffic made worse by the rain.  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story...

We shared a table with Nick and Kate, Jackie and Manny, and Meredith....Manny is sitting next to Meredith...he was also a regular at our home for many years as all of our kids and their friends were growing toward adulthood

The wedding party

Tony, Tim and Omar were in a band with Mike Fulton called 'Roadhouse'....Tony was lead guitar, Tim played the bass, and Omar played the drums (Mike played rhythm guitar)

Exchanging vows

Mike and Courtney doing their first dance as husband and wife

With our daughter Meredith, who flew in from Hawaii

Mom and son

.....by the time the wedding vows had been exchange, liquor consumed, and the wedding dinner eaten it was after 7:30 pm, and time for TLE and I to head home, in the rain.  In spite of the rain a great time was had by all.  

We arrived home to heavy rainfall, then spent time reading, and unwinding until after 9:30 pm before heading off to dreamland.  It was a good day to spend time with many of our 'honorary kids' and actual kids.  Our oldest son, Chris, and his wife, Rochelle, are heading to Mexico for their anniversary celebration, and were not able to be there.

Thanks for stopping  by!