Sonoma Sunday

We spent today in Sonoma with our eldest daughter's g/dfather, Tom, and "Aunt" Esty. They live in the city and spend many weekends at their wine country home. It's paradise to the Three Pinks -- acres of gardens, olive trees, fruit orchards and a large pool. It's paradise to us, too, actually. An easy hour from our house but a world apart. A jack rabbit greeted us as we turned into the driveway and when he reappeared later, Thing 2 chased him around the apple trees. We had lunch on the patio then the kids hopped into the pool.

I asked Tom about the work he and Esty had done to the house since they bought it and if he knew anything about its previous owners. Much to my surprise, he said that they bought it from an actress, Mare Winningham, who raised her four children there. A few years back Mare's now-adult kids stopped by and gave him even more scoop on the house. Kinda fun! Mare is best known for her role in St. Elmo's Fire and in recent years, played Meredith Grey's stepmother in one of my favorite shows, Grey's Anatomy.

They don't have children and we like to think ours are theirs. I'm hopeful one of the pinks will actually get married on their property. (Esty offered this up already. I'm not being obscenely presumptuous.) Wine country weddings -- a family tradition! If not, I will beg them to see if Dave and I can throw ourselves a 25th anniversary party there. Fifteen years down, ten to go.

Their olive trees produced enough olives this season to turn into oil and we were happy to take a bottle of liquid gold home with us. In exchange, I showed them how to create custom labels for their bottles using My Own Labels. Clearly we got the better end of the deal. Olive oil is a staple of our diet.