I have to show off my mom a moment. I wanna be like her when I grow up. (I’m amused that I get to invert the cliche of someone waving at the camera and going, Hi Mom! at the vast TV audience.)

Picture it, since I have the photo but don’t feel I can post it without asking–I got a wonderful shot yesterday of the small boy (maybe four?) reaching up and his great-grandpa, bent way over, reaching down, doing a “give me five!” together with great glee on both their faces.

I snuck in that photo of Kim yesterday in the time I had between helping set up the hall and the reception we held here for the newlyweds. Decades ago, the Catholic Church in Menlo Park (Kim’s mom’s family is Catholic) sold some land, including a few existing buildings, to the local Mormons. They kept the surrounding acreage and joked to our leaders, “How do you feel about being surrounded by Catholics?”

To which, I’m told, they were answered with a laugh, “How do you feel about having Mormons in the heart of you?”

The centerpiece of the property is a huge-trunked redwood that was honored as the best one in the city a few years ago. Both churches kept it for the treasure that it is, and it will grow on long after all of us are gone. It’s too big to fit in any one picture, and somehow that goes well with a wedding celebration.

We built our own church building, kept their cottage to house a genealogy library which is open for anybody and everybody’s use, and kept their reception hall. It’s a lovely old exposed-beam building with high ceilings and tall windows looking out on very old oak trees, and yesterday, that was where we celebrated.

It is also where our friends Conway and Elaine invited us to the wedding reception of their son fourteen years ago, where we first met another of their sons and his family–whose daughter is now in our family. Kim was ten.

In San Diego Friday a week ago, a couple who were friends of her parents sang, “Sunrise, Sunset” together, and everybody nodded yes at the “When did she get to be a beauty,” and laughed very much (he’s 6’9″) at the “When did he grow to be so tall!”