Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. It was six years ago that, overlooking a still wintery Lake Tahoe, we took our vows and this Holy Land Odyssey began. No matter what my expectations were at that time, nothing could have prepared me for the voyage of adventure and discovery that these last six years have become.

By coincidence, six years later to the day, my eldest daughters boyfriend took her last weekend on a hiking trip in Yosemite and made her climb three and a half hours to the top of a mountain. Not being the most athletic of people, she put it this way “I told him that there better be a damn good reason for dragging me all the way up here or I was about to throw him off”. There was.

“Incurable romantic” that he is, he had made her hike for that three and a half hours before dropping to one knee and proposing. See chivalry is not dead! Now, for them too the odyssey begins, as they face that voyage of adventure and discovery called marriage.

But, even before then let the planning commence. Being the good Californian that she is, she has already declared that it will be an outdoor wedding in Napa Valley.

This has caused an incredible wave of excitement in our house as it begins to sink in for our three boys that, at long last, their dream of visiting California is about to become a reality. Our youngest boy already has his skateboard and iPod packed, being the “only essentials” necessary. The middle one has started to worry what he should wear to a Californian wedding. And the eldest has started to dream of California Girls and listen to The Beach Boys.