Wasn't It Yesterday When We Were Young?

Last night we drove to Santa Rosa to help our friends Dick and Gerry celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. I hadn't seen them in over a year, but Walt had dinner with them twice while he was down taking care of his mother and they talked about the anniversary celebration at that time (Gerry had sent me an e-mail about it earlier).

The original plan was to get together with us and with the woman who had been Gerry's maid-of-honor for her wedding (Walt and I were both in the wedding party). But it ended up just being the four of us for dinner.

We met them at their motel and I asked Gerry where we were going to dinner and she mentioned some restaurant in downtown Santa Rosa. As we started looking for the restaurant, I suddenly realized it was all familiar and as we passed the restaurant, I realized that it was so familiar because I had actually eaten in that restaurant when my friend Mary was here visiting from Wisconsin last year. I know one restaurant in the whole city and that's where we were going. I was actually delighted because I remember that it was a great restaurant.

We started with sparkling rose and gave a toast to the anniversary:

(Funny that it's Dick and Gerry's anniversary and the only person who shows in this picture is Walt!)

We went on to have a fantastic dinner. Dick and Walt each had some seafood stuff, Gerry had duck ravioli

and I had butternut ravioli, which I discovered when I read my previous entry about this place, was exactly what I had ordered the last time too. It didn't disappoint the second time around.

It was a lovely dinner, nicely avoiding all the hot button topics that sometimes get us into trouble.

(What's in her hand is their wedding book...
I had one just like it for our wedding)

Then, because we are all crazy for used book stores, we stopped at one which was just across the street and browsed for awhile.

I picked up a couple of coloring books for Pedro. The information about him says that he is interested in art. You can't send an envelope that is more than 1/4" thick, so I found a coloring book with lots and lots of intricate shapes and can send him several pages at once over the coming months. I also found a coloring book about the history of California that I thought he might like as well.

I also found some Albert Payson Terhune books. I collect them--not passionately, but I loved them as a kid and have several. This was not one that I already had, and I recognized a couple of beloved stories in it, so I bought it too.

We finally ended the night by driving back to the hotel and retrieving our car. It was really a lovely evening. But surely it can't have been 45 years since their wedding! Wasn't it only like...yesterday?