Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.-Benjamin Franklin

Conversation with a coworker who lives about a mile from us.

Coworker: When the weather was nice a couple weekends ago we went out to the wineries and had a picnic.

Me: Wineries?

Coworker: Yeah, you know out Jefferson. (The street we both live off of)

Me: There are Wineries out Jefferson? How far?

Coworker: About 15 minutes. So anyway we were having a picnic and...

Me: Wait, you're telling me there are wineries 15 minutes from my house?

Coworker: Yeah. We we're...

Me: 15 minutes away... there are wineries?

So guess what we did this weekend. We were originally looking for Bogle, which you may be familiar with (You can get their wine in most grocery and drug stores, very fancy I know). On the way we found The Old Sugar Mill.

Inside are several tasting rooms for various wineries (I'm guessing small ones). They we're having an event with food and tango demonstrations. And it was all in this amazing old building. It looks like they're renovating the rest of it and I can't wait to see what goes in there.

We only tasted in one room because it was pretty crowded and a little awkward getting around the people doing the tango. But I bet on a regular weekend it would be great. We did enjoy the wine and Fiona was a big fan of the salt water fish tank.

It WAS an awfully cool tank with all kinds of anemones and ummm other cool plant like fish things growing in it. Fiona thought the two clown fish we're Nemo and Nemo's dad but was confused by the lack of Dori.

The outside of the building had about 5,000,000 places to take cool pictures.

On our way to Bogle we went through the actual town (village, hamlet?) of Clarksburg. It was eensy tiny and had a lot of boarded up buildings. But we saw this cool old fire engine and decided we needed to stop.

We eventually made it to Bogle. We bought a couple bottles and Fiona found her favorite thing for the day. His name is Sylvester and he is ubermellow.

I didn't know Dave was taking my picture. I was smiling at Fiona trying to reattach some sticks she found on the ground to the tree she thought they'd fallen from

So in summation, there are wineries 15 minutes from my house.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.-George Carlin

At the wedding we went to on Saturday the Brides father was pouring people wine glasses full of Tequila. THAT was a party.

Pumpkin Patch 2009

One of Many Reasons My House is Always Filthy

Things to do last weekend

Clean our room (Not Done)
Clean master bathroom (Not Done)
Clean kitchen (Not Done)
Clean floors (Not Done)
Clean living room (Not Done)
Clean Fiona's room (Not Done)
Read a book (Done, I read the whole thing)

Proper Wine & Food Pairing

Me Thinking:

Mmmm this wine is tasty.

Tashty.

Hmm I'm slurring my thoughts.

Oh wait dinner, I should eat dinner.

What to go with this lovely Fume Blanc?

Ahh fish sticks perfect.

White wine with fish right?

Raging Watters

What an exhausting but fun weekend. Saturday Fiona and I went to my SIL's (AK) baby shower. It was lovely and she made out like a bandit. There were two other little girls there and Fiona ran around like a...well like a toddler and I chased her for hours. I was wiped out by the time we were done.

Then that night AK's Mom was an angel and watched Fiona and her grand daughter so a bunch of us could go out to a nice dinner. Because our official excuse for going out was to celebrate my birthday I splurged & had the lobster ravioli and also chocolate mousse (my all time favorite food).

Sunday I went and got a pedicure and did all the weekend chores since we'd been busy all day Saturday.

Then Monday we didn't go to work again using my birthday as the excuse but really we just wanted to go to Raging Watters. Dave's brother (P) and his wife (AK) (yeah the pregnant one, brave woman) came with us and we all had a blast. Fiona was one tired and therefore cranky toddler by the time we left.

And by popular demand. Alright just Roses but she's popular with people who are me so there ya go. Here is my fabulous straw hat. Originally it was stiffer with less floppy brim but Fiona spilled some juice on it and then I wore it in the toddler area and it got soaked so it was rather fetchingly redesigned before we took the photo. Also I hope you appreciate that Dave didn't get a full body shot of me in a bikini so you don't need to pry your eyes out and burn them.

The Folsom Zoo

Do you know it took me all day to get these stupid pictures to load?

Any way it was a busy weekend. Friday we went out to pizza with Dave's parents and one of his brothers and his wife. Saturday we did chores all say. Sunday we went to the Folsom Zoo with Dave's mom his brother and his wife.

The zoo is pretty cool. It's very small but pretty much all the animals were rescued either after being injured in the wild or being kept places they should not have been (honestly who gets a pet tiger?). The very first cage was a little odd though because it was feral cats. Domestic cats sleeping on cat trees.....yeah that's what I go to the zoo for. The Mountain Lions though were impressive and a little scary.

My Brother in law took a family portrait of us. Fabulous isn't it.
Then we rode the train. Johnny Cash would be disappointed because as far as I know these are the only train tracks any ware near Folsom prison and there was no dining car.

From left to right: Fiona, Dave, Me, MIL, SIL (AK), & BIL (P)

And we just got home from a bbq at the home of Dave's other brother (the twin) and his wife (B&J). We are tired and Fiona is stinky.

On Wed Dave's little sister (AB) gets here for a few days. So much family such little time.

Spring Has Sprung, The Grass Is Ris, I Wonder Where The Flowers Is

This weekend I was planing to clean our room but the weather was nice so instead I laid in the hammock and read a book. I know that some of the people who read this are in places where it is still cold possibly even snow covered. So I fully sympathise with the fact that some of you are now going to feel the urge to come out here and kick me in the groin when you read the next sentence. I got a sunburn!



My people come from countries that are notoriously cloudy and the people are pale, pasty even. So I burn easily and I know better than to spend more than about 15-20 mins in the sun without sun screen but the laziness that caused me not to clean our room extended to putting on sun screen too. So currently my skin is a splotchy combination of the only two colors it is capable of, paper white and bright red.



So see I've been punished. You don't need to kick me in sensitive body parts but if you'd like to come visit I'll get Dave to light up the barbecue and you can poke at my red arms while we sip refreshing beverages.

Saturday Dave gave Fiona an orange off the tree in our backyard. Two minutes after this picture was taken he had to hose her off, with an actual hose.

Sunday we went to a birthday party for our friends 1 year old. Didn't she look cute? Latter I stupidly gave her two strawberries and this dress looked like she'd committed a brutal murder. Luckily Shout gets everything out so the dress will live.

BTW the title of this post is a quote but I'm not sure from where or I'd give credit. I think it may have been a comic strip.

What I Love About Camping

#1. Not showering for 3 days. It's not so much the being dirty part I enjoy it's the fact that when I do get to take a shower it's so much more satisfying than usual. Cummon washing off a light sheen of perspiration or washing off a head to toe dirt tan that actually requires a scrub brush to completely remove? Dirt tan all the way baby!

#2. (And this is my actual point) The lost art of conversation. There is no tv you have to actually talk to the people your with, or sometimes people you just met in the next camp site. And a lot of the time it's the sort of topics I like to bring up here. For example a conversation might go something like this.

1st person: I just saw (insert movie title here)

2nd person: I saw that. It was (insert good or bad comment)

3rd person: Really? I thought it was (insert opposing opinion)

2nd person: You know what movie I (loved/hatted)? (insert different movie title)

1st person : I read that book. I thought the movie was.......

you get the idea

It's not always as simple as a debate over movies it might be a discussion of some current event or telling stories of trouble we got in to as kids. I'm always pleased to discover that we don't run out of things to say to each other. And as long as you may have known these people, whether they're family or friends you get a new insight in to the workings of their minds.

I miss camping. We haven't gone since before I was pregnant and I imagine it will be somewhat different with kids. There will probably be less alcohol and some of the more R rated stories will need to wait until they are asleep but the conversation will continue. That makes me happy.

Much Better Than Cleaning

Yesterday was nice. Dave went to get us a new cable box for our room because the old one didn't work AT ALL. He came back with a DVR for our room (SWEET!) and Jamba Juice for all. This is actually Fiona's second Jamba Juice but the first one was not caught on film.

After the sugar rush we took her for a walk to see if the park by our house has finished replacing the playground equipment they tore out a few months ago. They aren't done yet but they do have most of the new stuff in so hopefully soon we'll be able to play at the park again.

This picture was while I was on the floor giving Fiona the Jamba Juice. Please forgive my wet, not styled, seriously hideous hair. I just thought this exemplified my relationship with Sammy. "I love you now please get out of my face."

After all that Dave's brother P and our sister in law AK came over. AK and I went and saw "He's Just Not That Into You" which was very cute. I probably wouldn't have seen it in the theatre if she hadn't invited me to see it but I'm glad I did. It's a total chick flick but in a tongue in cheek way.

After we all had dinner and they went home I gave Fiona a bath and tried to put her to sleep. She's been fighting us on going to sleep and last night was no different. So I tried something a little different rather than wrestling with her trying to force her to lay down I let her try to sit up. I was surprised that when she sat up she immediately laid her head on my chest wrapped her little arms around me as far as the could go and fell asleep. I didn't even want to put her in her crib.