Thanksgiving Family Photos

Ojai!

Oh, hi. (Yes, that's a pun.) Another day trip and we actually get to check a place off our California list. On a nice crisp fall day, we drove up to Ojai. Its only 40 minutes from our house. Easy-peasy.



Ojai is an artsy town with a lot of Spanish colonial architecture and public art, like this fountain with a matajilla poppy sculpture.

It also had nice parks.

Here's another fountain, in a naturalistic setting.

All the roses were done flowering and had formed rose-hips.

Here's the Ojai Museum.

And a bear sculpture.

And two little girls climbing on the bear!

Los Olivos Road Trip

Oh, who looks thrilled to be on another road trip with her family?  It's Paige!

Back in September, on the way home from Brandon's birthday weekend, we stopped in the little wine-country town of Los Olivos. And were swiftly seduced into joining the Byron wine club.  Los Olivos is near Solvang (of Sideways fame) and is basically one intersection, with the obligatory olive-oil tasting, nice restaurant, and multiple wine tasting facilities, including Byron's.  Brandon loves Byron Pinot Noir.  I distinctly remember eating dinner with him in Vancougar (I mean, Vancouver) and watching his eyes light up when he saw a bottle of Byron on the wine list.  This was back in 2006.  He's been carrying a torch for this wine for awhile.   So the deal with this wine club is, you get quarterly wine shipments or you can pick up your box of wine at the tasting room.  We chose to pick ours up, since it's only an hour and a half away and the route is very scenic.  This last weekend was our scheduled pick up.  So, we hit the road.

Look at the pretty Mexican sage!  It was in bloom all over Los Olivos.  This is not Brandon's favorite plant.  He finds its flamboyant, widespread blooms unruly.  We had one in Jacksonville and it freaked him out.

Here's Paige posing with a pumpkin before our lunch.  Lunch was delicious - we went to Sides Hardware and Shoes.  I had kabocha squash soup and fried calamari with jalapeños.  Brandon had the most luscious burger I've ever tasted.  Good lord!  We both had some nice wine - chardonnay and pinot noir.

This may very well be the happiest you'll ever see Brandon on this blog.  He is inside the Byron tasting room.  He is happy and content.

Paige, well, not so much.

Anyways, I highly recommend Los Olivos.  It's about a half hour east of Santa Barbara.  The food and wine and the scenery were fantastic.  Do it.

October Highlights...the California Avocado Festival, Disneyland, and Halloween

October zipped by and Brandon was gone most of the month so my writing time was limited.  That is not to say that we didn't do fun things all month.

We kicked the month off with a short drive up the 101 to Carpinteria, (recently featured here- check it out, their photos are much better than mine!), for the California Avocado Festival.  We walked into Carpinteria's downtown with visions of guacamole in our heads.  Brandon and I are obsessed with guac and avocados in general.  We got in line with everyone else for guacamole nachos and then quickly ate them walking down the street.  We also had the festival's avocado ice cream, which I don't recommend.  I've had avocado ice cream in Mexico that was very sweet and lemony, but this ice cream tasted buttery with a vegetal whiff.  It needed a lot more sugar.  So, that's the gouge on that.  We also looked for, but did not find, the avocado honey beer that we had read might be on tap.  However, look what we found in one of the festival stalls:

As you can see, we have been eating it with gusto.  It's very strong, almost like molasses.  But back to the festival.  We strolled the stalls, bought some avocado bread, and listened to some live music before we loaded our sleepy girls in the car and headed home.  It was nice way to cap summer and spend a Friday night.

Our next adventure was Disneyland and California Adventure.

Here we are at Big Thunder Ranch.  I think that cowboy may have been trying to get fresh with Brandon.

I like the cat on the right.  Yikes!  What is that cowboy doing?  And why is he winking?

Here we are at California Adventure:

Disneyland was a lot of fun.  Although Brandon and I get bad-parent awards for terrifying both our daughters by taking them on Snow White's Scary Adventures.  Paige was quiet and visibly shaken for a full half hour afterwards and Jules cried with fright the entire ride.  We felt terrible.  And we didn't learn our lesson - we later took them on Pirates of the Caribbean.

So, back at the ranch.  One highlight this month was that Jules' hair grew long enough to be styled.

John and Monique also visited us this month.  We went out to dinner, checked out the pumpkin festival at the Farmer's Market, and had an enormous lunch.  Good times!

We wrapped up the month with pumpkin carving, costumes, and trick-or-treating.  Paige was Snow White and Jules was a cute pink cat.

Our neighborhood is a destination for trick-or-treaters - lots of people drive over, park, and walk our narrow beach side streets.  A lot of the houses here have garages on the first floor, large driveways, and obscured front doors. So people bring beach chairs and card tables down to their driveways to hand out candy.  After we took Page and Jules trick or treating (we only went a few blocks) we got out our beach chairs and a glass of wine and handed out candy.   We went though six bags of candy in one hour.  Lesson learned: buy more candy next year!