This weekend, we took a day trip to Sonoma. I’ve always preferred Sonoma to Napa for a few reasons. One, I’m not a huge wine drinker. I’m allergic to all red wines, can’t drink too much white wine without getting a headache, and prefer shopping to wine tasting any day. Sonoma, though much smaller, has much more appeal to me. It’s nice that we can drive to the town square, park (free) and spend the majority of the day doing just about everything we’d like (eat, shop, wine tasting, etc). If we want to visit other wineries, there are some beautiful places not too far from the square (as opposed to driving between all wineries, all day, in Napa).
Saturday, we didn’t stray at all from our normal routine. We arrived in Sonoma just before lunch, parked, and immediately went to the Cheese Factory. There, we bought several cheeses, crackers, salami, and olives, a couple of drinks and headed across the street for a picnic. Kaelyn had a wonderful time playing and rolling around the grass and we got some lovely pictures of her.
After lunch, we went to a couple of our favorite antique shops around the square as well as the kitchen store. I could spend hours in these places. One of the antique stores had some beautiful old doors from Northern China. …about 250 years old…that had been converted into free standing partitions. I immediately fell in love with them. I have been looking for a way to visually delineate my dining room and living room and these are perfect. To make it even better, my dining room chairs are also antiques from the same era and region of Northern China. The table, though new, was made to match the chairs and these partitions are similar in style and carvings…the stain is different, but the wood is the same (Elm). I couldn’t believe that we found something that will work so well! Of course, they were much more than we really wanted to spend, but after some discussion and going home to measure, we decided to buy them. I can’t wait until they arrive!
After shopping, we visited some small wine tasting rooms and then decided to drive out of the square to the Olive Press. The Olive Press is similar to a winery (actually located within a winery), but instead of wine, they make olive oil. I wanted to get a couple of bottles of my favorites and see if they had anything new we could try (they didn’t). The Olive Press is another reason why I prefer Sonoma to Napa!
We got home around 5pm, a little tired, but totally revved up. Roger bbq’d dinner and we relaxed the rest of the evening…staying up until around 2am for some reason.
Sunday was hot…well into the 100’s to 110’s and over. I love this heat. Much better than the cold spring we just had. But it was so hot, that none of us really wanted to spend any time outside. Normally, I can handle the hot weather if I have an ice cold drink and sit in the shade, but yesterday, I resigned myself to spending the day inside. We pretty much relaxed…Kaelyn has some new tricks now that she stands and I spent a good part of the day doing some research of symptoms for fluid on the brain. Kaelyn has none of these. Another call to the doctor to get some questions answered and I’m now convinced that this referral is just precautionary protocol (I both love and hate the hospital for this policy. Good on one hand to catch things early, bad for the amount of needless worrying they put me through). Although I won’t relax completely until after her appointment, I feel much better and am (almost) convinced that she does not have fluid on her brain and is just a big-headed baby!
No comments:
Post a Comment