whaaa happened?

i guess i really don't have to call this "belated" since most everything lately has been belated, but what the heck.

took last friday off and headed to Monterey on thursday night. my mom claims that when she told Maddy that "Justin and jena were coming home", Maddy ran to the door and started getting really excited. i'd like to believe her. :-)

after dropping Maddy off at the animal hospital/boarding place, we (me, Justin, mom, and dad) piled into the car and drove down to santa barbara on friday afternoon. we stayed in carpenteria that night. small town, but about a million times bigger than it was 50 years ago, which is the town my dad remembers. funny how things change over time! ;-) we ate dinner at a local place and then called it a night pretty early on.

went to my grandma's church on saturday morning and got there around 10:15 for an 11:00 service. since the crowd was mostly comprised of Japanese folk, we kidded that the service really could have started at 10:30.

things didn't hit me until i saw programs with my grandma's picture on it. then we walked into the church and i saw these gorgeous floral arrangements with a beautiful picture of my grandma in front of them. that was hard, but surprisingly i'm not getting too teary thinking about it now. maybe i'm still numb, i'm not sure.

the memorial service was nicely arranged and relatively brief. there were things i would have done differently, but hey, i didn't organize it. those arrangements were up to her daughter (not a blood relative) to do so, and i respect that.

there was a very nice Santa Maria-style bbq lunch provided afterwards, and we used that time to visit with family. caught up with 2 of my cousisns and their families. my dad and his 3 siblings were all in one room for the first time in maybe 6 years (?) so we took the opportunity to get lots of photos. it was handy to have my cousin's family there, because her husband is a professional photographer. he can't help himself sometimes, so he did his thing and arranged everyone, then we descended like vultures to capture pictures of what he organized. it was great.

it would have been nice to stay longer to hang out with my relatives, but my dad was exhausted and we didn't have hotel reservations for another night. so around 1:30 or 2:00, we piled back into the car (after changing into comfy clothes) and drove back to Monterey. i was excited because i thought we'd get back in time to pick up Maddy that evening, but we didn't make it. :-(

we did go to pick her up first thing on sunday morning and she was SO HAPPY to see us, especially my mom. it was really cute. the first time she was boarded (not as in hockey "boarded"!) and my mom picked her up, she was almost more interested in saying hi to other dogs than going home. of course, that was only after we had known her for a couple of weeks. in the meantime, she and my mom have become the best of buddies and Maddy went nuts when she saw my mom. so cute, those two!!!

Justin and i hopped into the car again, drove back to santa cruz, then i hopped back in the car and headed off to hockey. it was team picture day, and someone (i'm guessing Lucinda or Amy?) had enough foresight to bring bananas (!) for us to hold for our team photo. it was SO funny. i can't wait to see how the picture turns out. the game was a little more rough than usual and there wasn't as much friendly banter between the teams as there normall is. strange, but hey, we WON! a two-peat! i finally scored my first goal of the season and celebrated Andrea-style. which is to say i skated back to the bench not even realizing it was a goal. :-) the puck was sliding towards the goal line but took its sweet time doing so. i was turned around and couldn't whack at it again so i just had to painstakingly watch and listen. i thought the whistle blew before the puck crossed the line, so i just skated back to the bench. then Andrea said the faceoff was at center ice! woooo! the other team tied it up but we took the lead for good at the very end of the 2nd period. wooooo!

and that, my friends, was what happened during the past weekend. phew.