The Brangleton Bonfire Bonanza

Did you know that 1 hour of stress has been shown in scientific studies to kill brain cells?? 1 hour. And that is my justification for why you will see yet another post with no photos included...I forgot to bring the photos to work with me. Don't judge. It's due to all those accumulated hours of stress.

The Brangleton Bonfire Bonanza took place on the weekend of May 21, 22, and 23. This was what Clint and I had come up with to serve as our bachelor and bachelorette parties. Neither of us were too big of fans of the traditional parties, so we decided to change things up and have a co-ed camping trip party!

Now you may notice that I had called it a Bonfire Bonanza, but later referenced a camping trip. Our plans were subject to change when, for unknown reasons, the state of California decided to continue the winter season well into the month of May. I'm not kidding when I say it was spitting snow on Friday of the Bonfire Bonanza. We had wisely decided to cancel the camping trip on the Wednesday before, but we were still hoping for miraculous warm weather!

It didn't happen.

So we relocated the party to Jess Bray's ranch and it donned the new title of the Bonfire Bonanza. Please note that when I say "we" during all of this, I really mean Jess Bray. He was the best man with the best plan, and he spearheaded this whole event in our honor. He did so many other awesome things for us in the week surrounding the wedding, you will be well acquainted with his name after this is all said and done. Or typed and done.

When Clint and I pulled into the ranch on Friday afternoon, it was a blustery mess. It was FREEZING. The usual crowd was in the shop, huddled around a heater...and everyone was commisserating on the crappy weather forecast. In fact, this was supposed to be the warmer day of the weekend. My friends from Florida had flown into Sacramento around noon on this day, and were currently driving the 4 hours north to our party. Let's just say that I couldn't stop laughing when I got the following text message:

"We're driving through the town of Weed (seriously?) and it is snowing."
"And Marc is wearing flip-flops"

I may have failed to mention that it was still winter here in Northern California, but luckily they came prepared for a variety of climates! Beanies, gloves, and NOT flip-flops were put on, and we were ready to party!

After many hours of bonfire madness, pizza, beer, beer, beer, and more beer, we finally made it home at the ungodly hour of 11 pm. Yep, you heard me. We lasted until 11 pm at our own party. Thankfully, everyone hit it a little too hard that night and crashed pretty early. After a mid-afternoon run to Burger King for some hangover food on Saturday, we were ready for another night of mayhem!

We saved our big party pants for Saturday night. I won't give it all away here, but we may have single-handedly destroyed the ozone layer, we created a self-proclaimed RV park behind the shop, and I woke up to a very blackened fingernail. But at least it wasn't raining!