Katy and Stav's Wedding in Sedona

Last weekend, we had the pleasure of seeing Katy and Stav tie the knot in the gorgeous Sedona, AZ.  Before our trip, I had never heard of Sedona, but we can see now why John McCain chose to buy a house here.  Armed with multiple warnings about how to deter timeshare sharks, we managed to eventually leave without buying any property, but I must say that we were tempted. Big sky, red rocks, good friends, and awesome mojitos. Why come home to failing banks and performance reviews!?

We took a fantastic Pink Jeep tour and went off-roading among the beautiful cliffs and buttes (Broken Arrow tour, highly recommend it).  Pink Jeep was apparently made famous by its Sedona outfit, and our tour guide drove us up and down lots of steep rocky hills, through some fantastic scenery.

The most interesting part of the ride, however, was when Chris started chatting with another guy in our jeep, who turned out to be the press secretary for U.S. Representative Lynn Westmoreland, the congressman who was made nationally famous by the Colbert Report.  Here's a video of Colbert's interview with Lynn Westmoreland in case you didn't see it.  He had some interesting backstage stories about that taping, and talked about how he thought he would be fired after scheduling that particular appearance.  All I can say is wow, I can't imagine having his job...but on the bright side for him, at least the Bulldogs won!

Here's a picture that our tour guide took for us:

We also got a chance to visit Montezuma's Well and Montezuma's Castle, and we hiked around Bell Rock and Courthouse Rock.  The hiking trail was supposed to have one of those mystical "vortexes," but our hunt basically consisted of pointing to suggestive-looking rocks and chortling, so the vortex spirits never revealed themselves.  (Ugh...that was terrible.)

More pictures of our trip and the wedding are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/KatyAndStavSWedding

My Best Friend's Wedding

Last weekend, Chris and I went to the wedding of my best friend since the fourth grade, Judy Hodes (Judy Mintz now!). I can't believe how many years have passed since we met, and now we're all grown up and married, sniffle! Seems like yesterday that we were making our California missions together at Old Orchard. Ahh, Old Orchard... I still remember that our mascot was an owl named Hooter. Then one day, his name was suddenly changed to Oscar (or something), with the explanation that "Hooter was not the name of the nineties." LOL. I'm not sure I understood what that meant back then.

On the other hand, I can't even remember what mission I chose, so I suppose on some level, it's believable that fourth grade was a long time ago (and maybe also educationally useless, ouch).

The ceremony and reception were held at a beautiful temple in Rancho Palos Verdes. This was the first time we went to a Jewish wedding too, and Chris got to wear a yarmulke -- cute no?

I also got to see my other high school buddies, Shar, Mel, and Sarah! Shar and Mel we see a couple times a year, but Sarah I literally haven't seen since we graduated from Hart, so it was fun to catch up.

We carpooled from SCV (yay environment) and initially joked about how we would have a great game of "what ever happened to..." during the drive, but as it turned out, we have no idea what happened to most people, so this game wasn't as promising as initially advertised. In two short years however, it'll be time for our 10-year reunion. Scary.

Anyways, here's Judy looking gorgeous on her throne!

Here's a few more pics if you're interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/JudySWedding

Everything was so lovely and fun...and surprisingly rowdy! I can't tell whether the fun and rowdy bit is characteristic of every Jewish wedding, or if this is more a reflection of a party planned by Judy, but I am super-impressed that she organized everything herself! My wedding would have been a catastrophe if I hadn't had the help of my phenomenal wedding planners.

During the reception, Judy's dad re-introduced me to my fifth grade teacher, who to my horror, I didn't recognize on sight. My main memory of that class was that she made me be the "group leader" of my team's "covered wagon" as we planned our journey on the Oregon Trail. Being a totally shy Chinese girl who never said anything in class EVER, I was terrified. I also remember being very anal about making everyone bring enough casks of water.

Ironically, over the past few weeks, I've been floating the idea of leading a week-long backpacking trip through the Grand Canyon with any interested friends, but I had to be reminded by Chris that we would need to carry water (and water is heavy). Apparently I was smarter and more responsible in the fifth grade than I am now. Sigh.

After the wedding reception, we decided to drive straight home, which took something like seven hours, so it was like 4:30 a.m. by the time we made it back to Palo Alto. Just in time for a 10 a.m. meeting the next morning, two hectic days of work, and a three-day trip to Lake Tahoe with my team, yay!

Then the next day, Colette came to visit us, en route from Beijing to Philly, with great stories about watching the Olympics in China. What a fantastically fun couple of weeks, and a nice restful Labor Day weekend to top it off!