Best Wedding in Four Years

Just yesterday I got back from a very important event, my brother Owen's wedding weekend out in the city of Boise, which is in Idaho. It was also my sister-in-law Laura's wedding weekend. Coincidentally, they were marrying each other. 

Before there could be a wedding on Saturday, there was a Friday's worth of important things to do. Like get Owen all checked out of his bachelor apartment. 

And then much of the family convened at the state capitol building, which is in Boise, because Boise is the capitol of Idaho. Inside the capitol they were holding a graduation ceremony for new corrections officers. (Note the table of spare badges that weren't handed out). And there was also art, like George Washington holding a light saber and Martin Luther King carved from a stump. 

Then we grabbed lunch at Tin Roof Tacos. The crowd was wowed by their fried shrimp tacos. (Not pictured--what's happened to me?) We happened to stand in line outside the restaurant behind a friend of Owen's who was also getting married on Saturday.

After lunch a few of us visited the old Boise train depot from which we could observe all of downtown Boise. We also discussed what the difference might be between "In-line Skates" and "Rollerblades."

Then we stopped by a Wal Mart to pick up some essentials for the wedding. And saw the truck of someone who Dad would probably get along with.

Back to the hotel for a minute...

That night we went to Zupas to meet Laura's family, but on the way I stopped by my friend Rob Comstock's flagship store.

Before bed I walked around our hotel's neighborhood. There was a shiny theater with early showtimes.

Ok, thank you for scrolling this far. Promise I'm about to start posting wedding photos. But first, can I show you my buffet breakfast and the mural from the hotel dining room?

And now we drive across the street to the Boise Temple! And the Edwards turn up...then imagine that we go to the ceremony, and come outside, and then the photos continue with us waiting for Owen and Laura to emerge from the temple.

And the waiting is over! Here's the Barneses!

Let's look at who else was at the wedding. (that I got photos of)

Grandma. Sticking out her tongue at me?

Brother Greg with his Uncle namesake. OR just an uncle with the same name as him, unclear if he was named after him.

Uncle Duke

Uncle Frank.

Aunt Afton. 

And I believe the regular reader knows Mom and Emily. That guy with the camera? That's Owen's bishop, and the wedding photographer.

Hmmm. Looks like I don't have any pictures of the group photos. Well, believe me, they happened.

After the wedding and before the luncheon Greg, Becky and I took advantage of a taquito offer we'd noticed at a Mexican place right by the hotel.

But I didn't want to eat too many taquitos and ruin my not-pictured Wedding Luncheon lunch of tri-tip and chicken and mac n cheese, etc. But here are pictures of revelers and Emily, Mom and Dad paying tribute to the couple. Plus Owen's good friend Jeramy. Then Owen and Laura spoke.

Between luncheon and reception we passed some of the time by going to see the Hairy Coos, a type of Scottish hairy cow. Hey Coos, us Barneses are Scottish too!

And then, Reception Time!

A funny thing about the reception was that the woman who put out all this fruit left her phone on the table while she was doing it and it wound up buried in fruit for the whole night. 

Cutting the cake!

2017:

2013:

The Edwards kids love a cake cutting!

While people celebrated, other people were up to light trouble.

Back inside, let's eat that cake!

Now let's party!

And then it was time for Owen and Laura's big send off. But I don't have pictures of them running through bubbles. Because I was busy sending them off. But I do have a picture of Owen investigating the work they did on his car to make sure it was all street legal.

And after the party it's the after party, which we held at Boise's famous West Side Drive-In, where we story told and chit-chatted over tater tots, burgers and an ice cream potato.

And that's the story of the Wedding Weekend in Boise! I hope you enjoyed it.

We Came Back to Aspen Grove

Aspen Grove is a BYU alumni family camp just up the road a few more miles from Sundance. Growing up, Aspen Grove was just about the only vacation we ever took. To celebrate her 90th birthday, Grandma Taylor wanted her progeny to all to come to Aspen Grove again, and we happily obliged. We hadn't been there since 2007! The whole trip was full of good-natured nostalgia and making new memories. I cam with controlled expectations and had a very good time. It was just so nice to know I'd be getting three square meals a day. Now I'm going to try to get through the week as succinctly as possible, but I do have more than 100 pictures to post.

SATURDAY: Arrived in the late afternoon and found the rest of my family quickly. Gave the camp a good walking around and checking on, had our first dinner, went to the family-introducing meeting where we all glowed with pride as Grandma introduced our group and the reason for our gathering and then the big opening campfire happened.

SUNDAY: The main thing Sunday was our celebration of Grandma. And then nice quiet family time and stuff. Not too much to report.

MONDAY: Okay, NOW we're getting serious. Monday morning many of us tried out the High Adventure ropes course and shot guns. That afternoon was the famous Aspen Follies field games where we debuted our family t-shirt. Look at all these pictures of us having fun on the field! Why spoil it with some extra details about the water balloon launch? Before dinner I played an Deluxe Sized round of D&D with all the cousins and in the PM Andrew came up to camp to reunite with the family and for me to give him a grand tour and show him the A frame where we used to stay on our very earliest trips to camp.

TUESDAY: Tuesday morning I took a hike with Mom, Dad, Owen and Emily to the waterfall on the way to Mt Timpanogos. When we got back to camp Jon, my old counselor from 1993 was there! One of his sons is now an Aspen Grove counselor. Wow. Man. What a world. After lunch we did laser tag and then I showed Walker how to pose with a wooden snake. 

WEDNESDAY: Wednesday morning the youngsters had their chance to try out the High Adventure course and cousin Scotty talked his way on (I leant him my shoes since he only wears flip flops because he goes to college in Hawaii). I spent the afternoon/evening in Salt Lake, no pictures of that because IT WASN'T ASPEN GROVE.

THURSDAY: I believe I spent the day in classes or something? Maybe reading or taking a nap or something? I don't remember. There's no pictures. But in the afternoon I hiked to Stewart Falls on my own. Here's a photo Mom took of me at the trailhead in case I didn't come back. As you may be able to tell, I had my Leica with me, BUT I left my SD card behind. So no pictures from the hike. Oh well. But also Thursday was hamburger day, a day I'd been looking forward to all week. And when I got back from my hike I was all dirty so I put the reunion shirt back on (I'm telling you that because I don't want the costume change to throw you off and have you think this is two days worth of pictures). In the evening we had the closing campfire (there's a picture of when they had all the adults come up to sing Sweet Caroline after all the kid groups came up to sing their songs. And then we took a lot of pictures And now I feel it important to clarify that, along with all the Taylor descendants, Dad's brother Greg's whole family was there, too. So it was a family reunion with a bonus side-reunion. After that it was the big family dance, I hope you saw the videos from it that I posted on Instagram that night. And we stayed up late, like, until 10, maybe 11, sitting around and talking and then we went to bed.

FRIDAY: Well, things for me got crazy when I discovered, as I was packing up, that my wallet had totally disappeared. This kind of messed the whole rest of the day up for me, knowing I needed to get on a flight that evening and then the next night and also just trying to figure out if I had dropped it somewhere, left it somewhere, got it stolen, or what. So. No pictures. Frantic ending. But a great trip up until then and still not so bad in spite of the wallet loss.

Thing to Note: Two posts ago I filled this blog with pictures of my family together in Chicago for the 4th of July. Now here's this post full of family pictures for August. And next weekend we'll all be together in Idaho for Owen's wedding. This is a dang family photo blog now. Thanks for stopping by.

Grand Closings, Grand Openings

In the last few months a lot of good restaurants have closed and a lot of good restaurants have opened. And I visited a few of them. Here's what I have to say about these restaurants and my meals at them.

Los Closings:

Salvation Burger

I was sad to hear that Salvation Burger was shuttering, but then again, I hadn't been there for way more than a year. For a good stretch of time I considered their Classic the best possible burger to be eating in the city, but the price was out of control ($17, no fries) and prohibited eating as many as I would have liked. Service was always a disaster there, too, with waitstaff making every conceivable mistake at just about every visit. Glad I got to send it off with Kim and Lauren, glad Lauren was in town. A good place, too bad it couldn't be great. It's weird how the Bloomfield empire can be so inconsistent--Spotted Pig, the Breslin: gigantic; John Dory Oyster Bar: So good, never been back; Salvation Taco: weird, odd that it's still open, I don't know if anyone thinks about it; Salvation Burger: couldn't make it happen in spite of Spotted Pig and the Breslin paying their rent off their burgers; White Gold Butchers: TBD, guess it's making it happen for the UWS stroller and grouchy olds crowd.

Mr. Donahue's

I was sad to hear Mr. Donahues, the American food restaurant by the Uncle Boon's team, was shuttering because I hadn't been there yet. So I ran down on one of its last nights and found everything to be great. You pick a main (chicken fried pig cheeks for me, torn between these and trying their meatloaf) and two sides (crab imperial and mac & cheese) and sit back and enjoy. Wish I went a lot more times before, wish I could go back again. Oh well.

Los Openings:

Atla

If you eat at Atla, every single bite will be absolutely perfect, every dish totally delectable, but you will leave hungry and you will leave with a lot less money than when you came in. This is supposed to be Enrique Olvera's casual offshoot of his spectacular fancy restaurant Cosme, but you'll find an Atla mushroom quesadilla costing you $15 while they're $9 at Cosme. I don't know what to tell you: beautiful place, extremely delicious plates. Everything's undersized, everything's overpriced: NY in microcosm byway of Mexico. The night I went the staff was unattantive, disinterested, forgetful and overworked and the bathroom was out of both paper towels and toilet paper. Yeah, avoid busy time if possible. But also definitely go. Sigh. Tricky paradox this place.

Taqueria Atoradero

3-4 years ago, all the food-heads were sneaking up to the Bronx to eat at this hole in the wall called El Atoradero that was famous for its carnitas (I went on the hottest possible day and found my little pork bits to be gristely and rough). El Atoradero got famous enough to close and move to Brooklyn with the help of some ambitious restaurateur, I haven't been to that place, but they just opened a Taqueria affiliated with the Littlefield event space in Gowanus and I checked it out one Friday after work it found it to be quite satisfactory. Tacos start a little pricey at $4 per, but if you get 4 it's just $13...a good price for such hefty and tasty specimens of their class. Served on freshmade, homemade blue corn tortillas that are attractively heavy but pliant, I liked my steak, chorizo con papa, and grilled shrimp tacos the best. Tinga was fine, would prefer it on a tostada, of course, and the famed carnitas once again a letdown, just some rough pork cubes. Nothing neat or special about them. Great spot, though, if you're ever in need of somewhere to eat before hitting up the giant Ample Hills or don't mind a dining detour before going to whatever at the Barclay's Center.

Emily

The Pizza Loves Emily crew has come to Manhattan. The pizzas are just as good as those at Emmy Squared in Williamsburg, the burger probably just as the burger at the original Emily (I wouldn't know, I've never been able to get in there)--so if you want Emily pizza and you'd rather wait for it in Manhattan than Brooklyn, come here! It's good!

& Pizza

$10 for an unlimited topping make-your-own-pizza (except they make it, you just tell them all the components) that makes up for in size what it lacks in basic quality, it's like the Chipotle of pizza but it hasn't made me sick yet. Came to New York from DC, just like Sweetgreen, and it think's it's real cool, just like Sweetgreen. I would probably go back someday, just to keep trying to develop the absolute weirdest custom pizza order that I can.

Daily Provisions

Want the best bacon egg and cheese sandwich (look at that Peter Luger level bacon!) and crueler there could be? Come here on a Saturday morning, stand in line behind ladies in their yoga clothes and finance bros in their polo shirts, and in 30 minutes you'll have a breakfast of kings worth emailing home about.

El Check On

Just want you to know Superiority Burger is still one of the Top 3 restaurants in the city. Monday nights get lively with everyone showing up for the Tofu Fried Tofu sandwiches, but this recent night that I was there with Patricia the bean salad, pink beets and rainbow sherbet were also well worth the visit. This is a dang six star restaurant.

Ok, thank you for coming by and reading about food. Now come by and eat with me!