Speaking of birthday gifts. Way back in May I had bought Nurit tickets to the Carmel Bach Festival for our anniversary weekend. I organized a room and dinner with our friends John and Mary C. It turned out beautifully. The hotel was excellent the meals were delicious and the Brandenburg Concertos were wonderful.

If you think about it I got a twofer a birthday gift for Nurit and our anniversary celebration. Thirty-second for those of you keeping score.

John and Mary C in Italy 2004

We drove up to Carmel on Wednesday during the day and had dinner with John and Mary C. that night. It is about a six hour drive up highway 101 with a stop for In-n-Out in Santa Maria. The weather was perfect. We love the golden hills with the oaks on them. In fact Nurit realized that we didn’t have a painting of them and so we had a theme for our trip. We looked at about twenty galleries for a picture that captured our vision of rolling hills with oaks. We didn’t quite find it but we had a wonderful time searching.

Golden hills

with oaks

one of the closest paintings

I’m going to do another post about the festival and build an album on flickr of the trip photos.  Life is good.