These days when we head off to spend Christmas with the Big Guy’s family, it means a 3-hour airplane ride to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I do enjoy those trips, but sometimes I miss the days when his folks were living on Bay Farm Island in Alameda, only an hour or so away from our house via the freeway. We’d drive down on Christmas Eve morning and spend the night; we got to enjoy his family’s holiday traditions like sourdough pancakes for breakfast, soup and cornbread for the evening meal, and homemade red velvet cake to finish off the night.

We also had fun getting outside and working off some of that great food by hiking or cycling around the island’s trails, keeping our eyes open for the wide variety of marsh birds and, if the weather was right, great views of the San Francisco skyline.

This was where the Big Guy was fishing after dark and managed to hook a big skate — no pictures, sadly. He cut the line and let it swim away