Sarah’s Spittle

December tomorrow.. how crzy time flies. Chris surprised me with a cappuccino espresso maker the other day. What a sweet man - he doesn’t even like the smell of coffee. I guess my brother-in-law buying a hello kitty tea maker for my sister tops that one. He bought it off someone who has no clue why she got it as a wedding gift. Hello! Who registers at Sanrio? But what an evolved man Ben is — to stand for children’s character appliances around the kitchen, way before they were thinking kids.

My best friend had her baby induced this morning. I have a feeling its a boy, which means absolutely nothing.=)

Sooo incredibly fatigued after the combined birthday party of both my girls, turning 2 and 5. Combining birthday parties is definately recommended if their birthdays are close enough together. I can’t imagine going through that two times a year!

We only invited like 6 families, all with children around the same ages as our kids. I like the suggestion many child psychologists recommend: invite the same number of kids as the age the child will be turning. So we did, and add in siblings, it was still a good sized party. A jumper is perfect for birthdays too. You don’t need any other activities planned. The kids just go in the jumper the whole time. Our older daughter got in the jumper and said,"This is the best day of my life!"

Our younger daughter was in Dora heaven. Now she likes Diego too.

I had the best birthday present! Chris surprised me by making plans ahead of time for my mother to babysit the girls while we went on a weekend getaway to Santa Maria for wine tasting! How fun is that?! We stopped in Santa Barbara and strolled the streets, popped in to a bookstore for a bit, and then a clothing store called Shooz. He spent over an hour picking out outfits for me, and I walked away with seven pieces of clothing and a cool lookin belt! We had dinner at Chase, a cozy restaurant bar and I had the cioppino, my fave stew. It was the best birthday ever, I felt like a princess.

Then we spent the night at a hotel in Santa Maria. Today was quite a deja vu, as we drove up and down all the roads that we had four years ago, wine tasting. This time around we bought 11 bottles in all, not like the cases after cases we had bought last time, stuffing them in the backseat and trunk of my little white convertible. We stopped at some familiar scenic spots for photos- same faces, same places, a different car. We stopped at 10 or 11 wineries, only tasted at 8, I think. On the way back we had dinner at a cute local favorite in Santa Barbara called Peabody’s. Now we are back home with the sweet kids.