Monday, June 24, 2013

Girls gone Wine Tasting

Every year a I like to get a group of gals together and organize a fun trip to Solvang every year for wine tasting. Every year it gets bigger and bigger. First time it was 2 girls, than 3 than 5 this time it was 9! I must say as well...thee funnest group of gals!!
 
We all decided to meet up at noon at the Solvang visitors center which ended up meeting at Lucas & Lewellen in the members section of the tasting room. We all immediately started wine tasting and chatting. Kara and Karen surprised all of us girls with a very fun girls gone Wine tasting goodie bags. The bags contained all the wine tasting necessities such as a bottled water, advil, a hand folding fan, wine glass with charm, wine off spray, chocolate and other fun tidbits! We were all so surprised and excited we got hushed by the pourer. We left afterwards and checked in the room , dropped off our luggage and all caravan to Los Olivo's and had Lunch and tasted there.
 
Afterwards we headed back to Solvang and walked around to various tasting rooms and than back to the hotel for some Hot Tubing and More wine drinking. By nightfall we were all wined out and headed for real cocktails..the night went long but it was full of fun!
 
 
 This is the second day we were there. I did not take any pictures of the first night cause I was just having too much fun. Here we all are before heading out to breakfast  after drinking Mimosa's and Wine in the room. From left to right Robin,Maria,Loryn,Karen,Kara,Mary,Vicki,Me,Jennifer
  Girls Gossiping...hahaha NEVER
 Everywhere we went everyone always asked what the occasion was..and there was some goods ones, such as all girl punk rock band! At breakfast once again we were asked what the occasion was and Kara quickly replies it's Karens 27th birthday!!! ( which really wasn't) and after our meal and after we all forgot about the whole it's Karen's 27th birthday..the staff comes in signing Happy Birthday with brownie and all which we were more than delighted to jump in and sing along..it was pretty hysterical!!
 After breakfast Kara and Karen headed back home and the rest of us gals headed to make two more wine tasting spots before going home. Jen is a member at Presidio in Solvang so we had to go there to take advantage of the free tastings. Everything I had there was really good. I mean almost everyone signed up to the club that day. We than went over to Lincourt ( pictured above) What a lovely place.
 We got our tastings in the Barrel room and every thing was so delicious that we tried. Robin ended up joining!! Afterwards we relaxed on the grounds and took Photos. I love this one of Jen just hanging out on the wine barrels.

 The Grass was so nice and cool and relaxing
 So was the cement pathway
 Playing in the vineyards!
 Before we hit the road we decided to go eat ..and did a little hanging out with Jason Segal!!
And as us fun group of gals headed back home..The sky shed a tear..until next time I bid you adieu

Friday, June 21, 2013

October 2013 all rolle dup in one

Getting back to catching up from where I left off..here are some fun things we did in October 2012
 
We did our annual Knott's Halloween Haunt trip with the Usual gang that we do every year. We always start off by having a drink in the hotel rooms
Than we head out to Amber waves and enjoy the spooky decor and have Halloween themed cocktails and apps. This particular drink had my brother Gasp
 
See the ingredients.....Afterwards we headed back to the room for drinks and music
Than into the Park for more fun and drinking and getting scared
 
Somehow towards the end of the night we all got split up..Gabe, Myself, and Toni and my bro luckily were all together and pretty intoxicated that we thought it would be a FANTASTIC idea to ride on bigfoot rapids like 8 times in a row...we were drenched!
This was my dry side
 
End of the night and ready for bed
We did a lot of trips to Disneyland in October as well with the kids..they had a blast with this halloween shindig

Candy corn Cotton candy..YUM
We went to a few parties such as this fun Kids Pumpkin Carving party




 
We got a new member to the family...Our show cat CASH..he is purebred Bengal. I took him in as a rescue.
Ava helped me back Heep loads of cupcakes and other goodies for the neighborhood kids
and we ate lots of treats too!!
Thelma came with me to the Queen Mary Haunt since I get free tickets from my brother every year when he works there scaring people.
 
Maria and Greg hosted a fun evening with treats and cocktails such as this ghoulish poison apple punch and than we all headed to the Haunted Hayride
And more trips to Disneyland to see the Franken weenie exhibit
Always a blast at Disneyland
Parker wanted to be a DARK evil guy thing..My brother helped throw this together...I thought it came out pretty well for a home made costume
 
and of course after a Million different costumes Ava has been wearing all month long here was her real one hand made by me! A little red devil!!
 
The kids had a battle, and when the first toddler came over to trick or treat Ava was EXCITED to hand out candy. We finally headed out trick o treating and met up with our old neighbor Dolcy and her two boys and trick o treated the night away.
It was a pretty GREAT October!
 





Wednesday, June 19, 2013

And were back...and 2012 Pomona Fair

I have so many distant relatives and friends to keep in touch with and as much as I try to keep everyone informed on what the Fam has been up to on Facebook quite frankly I don't want to crash facebook with everything that we been doing SO I decided time to get this ol blog started back up. I am just continuing on Blogger because I don't feel like starting ALL over again on a site I don't know how to use.


I guess I have a Lot Of catching up to do So I guess I will start off with what we did in the end of September 2012...Starting with the LA County Fair

 
 
It is tradition for me to go to the LA county fair every year. We didn't go in 2011 but we did manage to make it out 2012. We started off by checking some of the exhibits. I love looking at the arts and crafts. I really like checkout out the table displays!
They had a very cool rock n roll exhibit. VERY COOL and even better a cool little record and classic candy shop in it as well! There was ALL kinds of fun musical activities for the kids to do. Parker bailed as soon as we walked in exploring.


 Ava made a B Line to the BIG step on Piano keyboard.
 I tried getting this photo but with the kids in it too...yeah too much fun stuff to do than to pose with this background that they have NO idea what it is..

 However Parker did want to catch a wave on some slick vinyl
 Some cool displays of old stereo units...hey ...I think we had the bottom console in the 70's
 and this looks awfully like my first boombox I got for Christmas one year...
 Ah yes...thee ol 8 track. I don't know how people collect these still...Vinyl will always be a classic but 8 tracks..go figure
We stopped at the store to check out some of the vinyl and fun novelty items. We got Parker a pair of white 80's shades that light up, and Ava a Astro pop. I got some Violet mints.
Gabe snuck in a little bottle of Honey Jack Daniels from the night before and we poured ourselves a glass and added some frozen lemonade to them...it was Perfect!
 After walking around a bit we headed to the petting zoo. The kids love animals.

 See this face...it is the I love this animal so much I want to squeeze it to death look..sometimes she just gets this crazy grinding her teeth face with our dog and cats too.
 Where Parker is more of a gentle soul who calmly pets each animal
 Ava loves ponies so much...I cannot Wait to get her started in Equestrian sports


 She did NOT want to get off
 They had this make believe princess and knight area where we let the kids play for awhile.

 I stayed with Ava in the princess area 
 Gabe was with Parker in the Knight area


 But soon Ava rather been a knight fighting Parker
 How cool...two story carousal
 After lots of walking around and checking out the scene we were ready to eat! Oh look a skinny bar!! I did not go though.
 My favorite spot...The train city!!



 The kids could just sit here for HOURS watching the cars go by.
 Than it was off for more play time ...Ava was trying to juggle
 and Parker too..



 Too much fun for this bunch
 OO a flea circus...we got a kick outta that!
 Gabe and I headed off to the garden area where we did a little wine tasting and checked out the beautiful ponds and flower arrangements.


 The kids went on some rides and played some games too

 Ava LOVES roller Coasters!!




 And once the rides were done they shared a funnel cake

We were pretty spent and finally headed on the long ride home. I cannot wait for this years!