Weddings

Above is a picture of Brandon and Marcella. They were married yesterday and Zac and I were lucky enough to enjoy their wedding day with them. They are such a cute couple and I am very happy for them.  I have known Brandon for…I believe almost 10 years! Crazy. And I met Marcella a few years back when we went backpacking together. I liked her right away. She is such a sweet person. Anyways, I really enjoy going to weddings. I didn't used to but I have changed my ways. Everyone is so happy and celebrating, how can you not!? I wish that Zac and I could get married again just so we could have another wedding! I know that sounds crazy but…I guess Im crazy. I always wonder how people get so overwhelmed with wedding planning and why they are so happy when its over. I guess I just had so much fun planning my wedding and everything went so smooth that it was just a really good experience!

Although back in my day! (am I allowed to say that?) we didn't HAVE pinterest. Could I have gotten some great ideas off of pinterest. Oh well, I think I did pretty well without the help of the internet.  Zac told me I should just become a wedding planner but the thing is I want to plan for MY own wedding. Don't get me wrong its not that I didn't like my wedding, I loved it. It just loved it so much that I'd want to do it again. Although I would do it completely different! Except for my dress. That dress. Gorgeous. 

The wedding was held at the Wheeler Ranch which is a park setting. It was very simple and very rustic. It looked gorgeous. There were only a few little things that went "wrong" if you will. The wedding didn't start till about 40 minutes after the designated time and the man that was officiating the wedding was Brandons grandpa which Im pretty sure he has dementia. He repeated a few things over and over and did not make sense the whole time but Brandon and Marcella were very patient and in the end they got married, just what they wanted to do! And thats all that matters.

Did I mention that I am officially on vacation!? I have two weeks off. My doc is in Italy so that means I get time off.  Plus I got a summer bonus! So things are going pretty good. The day before we went to the wedding Zac and I decided to take the boat out to try for some Halibut fishing. There were quite a few boats out. The weather was pretty good. It was foggy but it burned off towards the end. We had no luck for halibut but we did catch plenty of rock fish and cabazon.  Of course my darling husband could not resist trolling for some salmon while we were out there, even though we are stuffed full of salmon in our freezer. We ended up catching two. The first one we got to the boat and lost it with the hook bending and the second one snapped off the 20lb leader. Even though it is a lot of fun catching them Im glad that we didn't get to keep them because we don't need anymore.

I think that Zac and I might go out on Wednesday. Although the plan was to go out for halibut but it sounds like the tides are going to be moving a little to fast. So we'll see what happens. Zac and I have the next three days together and then Im off for girls week! I just can't believe that it is already almost August, where did the year go?

Just because

In the picture above you see Ukiah. A few weekends ago Zac and I headed up to Cow Mountain to do a little shooting. You probably didn't know this, because I fell off the blogging cliff but for my birthday my darling husband bought me a gun. I didn't ask for a gun, but he surprised me with one. He does that a lot….surprises that is.  Anyways, he said it was a good deal and I have never owned my own gun so I was excited!

For those bloggers who actually care about what kind of a gun I have its a Browning .22. What I like BEST about it is that Zacs friend who used to own it was a sniper! How bad ass is that?! Although why he owned a .22 I don't know. 

Anyways back to our shooting day. We thought it would be a great idea to head on up to Cow and shoot my new gun and also shoot our bows. Zac didn't end up bringing his bow cause his peep site needs to be fixed. It was already pretty warm when we got up there but it was still a beautiful day. We decided to both bring our .22's because they are fun and cheap to shoot. Cow Mountain is a nice place to go because you don't have anyone really directing you on when to shoot. You can just do your thing and then leave when your done. 

Here is me shooting my new gun. What do you think? Obviously I dressed the part. I got my pink ears, my flag/camo vest and my boots! We had a really fun time. I enjoyed shooting my new gun. Zac also has a scope for it thats pretty sweet but I haven't been able to test it out yet. We will have to go back out so I can site it in.

I got a few good shots in. And of course I used my zombie targets that I got for Christmas. After a few hours of shooting we were ready to head back down the mountain. All in all it was a very fun day!

Me with my bow. Sorry for the photo dump of pictures of just me but Zac is just not as excited about pictures as I am. I like to capture every moment.

Oh yeah, one more little surprise from my darling husband. He came home with this truck. he told me that Im a truck girl and I needed to drive a truck. So I am. And I do.

Surprise

Remember us? Well we are still here. I would try and catch you up on everything thats been going on but that seems to be a bit overwhelming, so we are just going to talk about some salmon fishing if thats okay. So many people say that a boat is a money pit, or that you buy a boat and only use it s few times. Well people that is NOT the case in our family. Im pretty sure our boat has been out every week (sometimes two times) since we brought her home. 

Like I said earlier we are going to be talking about a salmon trip for this post. My dear sweet husband has been on what we like to call "a sick one" which means that he is all about the salmon fishing right now. Well the other weekend he got a text from one of his co-workers that the bite was on up at Fort Bragg. I guess he was fishing Friday morning and got limits (two salmon per person) in two hours. Well this sounded to good to be true! So we decided that Sunday afternoon we would drive up to Fort Bragg, spend the night and having a early day of fishing on Monday.

Zac did a little research and found us a campsite. He also found out that the tide was going to be super low so he thought it would be best to put the boat in a slip the night before and then in the morning we could head out without having to launch the boat.  Sunday was a busy afternoon, it took us almost 3 hours to drive to Fort Bragg. Then we had to get the boat launched and in the slip, set up our campsite and also take Huddy to the beach so he would be nice and tired for our morning of fishing. We finally got most of our to do's done and we were able to stop for a beautiful dinner that looked out onto the sunset. Both of us were very excited and talking about our game plan for the next morning. 

The morning could not come soon enough! Especially because our camp neighbors were up all night! I think I finally heard them shut up at about 4:30am…and our alarm clock went off at 5:30am. Lets just say I did not feel bad about making noise packing up camp! I was surprised that it wasn't foggy, I was planning on not being able to see the blue sky but low and behold there it was! The only thing about that sunny weather…is that is means it will be windy and choppy out on the ocean. Luckily, we didn't have to go out to far AND supposedly we would be done fishing in about two hours. We stopped at Dennys for some breakfast and then it was off to the boat.

We got the boat all ready to go. We were just pushing off when an older gentleman told us that the tide was super low out! Zac and I had already discussed this so I thought, its cool…we know! So we started to head down the river out to the ocean. We were both pretty excited to get our there. Down the river we went…nice and easy…when all the sudden aksjdkahkfjhskjdfh (Thats my noise for our rudder hitting the bottom). I asked Zac "What was that!?" He answered "Thats us hitting the bottom". We moved forward a little but with that same scraping sound. Finally Zac stopped the boat. We were stuck….STUCK! My heart sank. Im pretty sure every emption hit me, well maybe not the good emotions. But I was scared, anxious, nervous and embarrassed! Zac tried to move a few more times but were were stuck. The rudder was in the mud. I was flipped out. After talking things through Zac said that the tide would be back up in about two hours, enough for us to be floating again. TWO HOURS!? We are sitting here for TWO HOURS!? I just wanted to curl up in a ball and wake up when it was over. Talk about anxiety! After giving Zac a few different suggestions for getting us out of the situation he finally took one of mine up. He got out into the water (bless his heart) and wiggled the back of the boat till it actually freed up. He then moved to the front of the boat with some rope and started to pull us. It was actually working! I don't know if the tide had come in a tiny bit more or God had answered my prayer but we were actually moving! We finally made it to a place that was "deep enough" (which was still to shallow) to actually get the motor going. No wonder we saw no other boats going out. Anyways, so that was an exciting way to start our morning! Thankfully Huddy did SO well! This was his very first time in our ocean boat…and in the ocean for that matter. When we were stuck I just pulled out a bully stick for him to chew on and boy am I happy we had that for him.

Well we probably made it our to our fishing grounds and started fishing around 9:00am. Not to long after that I had the first bite! It was pretty exciting but I ended up snapping the line when I got it to the boat. The water was pretty choppy and there were quite a few boats out there. Before we knew it we started catching fish! Zac caught the first two while I was driving the boat. It was quite the ordeal to fish with only two people. Zac would grab the rod then I would run out and reel up the down rigger, then run back and steer the boat, then run back and grab the net and net the fish….then run back to steer the boat! We made it work though. So anyways, Zac caught the first two fish and it was my turn to catch my limits. I must say that those salmons put up one hell of a fight. My last one that caught I would get him up to the boat and then he would take off running…or swimming I should say. I think he did that 3 times before we got him in the boat! So much fun! When we checked the clock again it was 11:00am. Limits in 2 hours. Thats a fish every 30 minutes. Not to bad! Zac was thinking we could go rock fishing but with the water getting even more choppy I was ready to head in. I must say Hudson did great in the boat. He stayed out of our way and only ate one anchovy! 

We were both pretty happy with our fishing trip. Plus the tide was up so no getting stuck on the way back to the boat launch.  Well thats my fishing trip story. We did so well that a week later Zac went back out to Fort Bragg with a buddy and caught limits again! Needless to say we have a lot of salmon right now. I am going to bring in a bunch to my co-workers!