Meet West!

WARNING: West is very cute and will undoubtedly cause a severe case of "puppy envy". The onset of this disease is very quick. Symptoms are characterized by high pitched "Oooh's" and "Awww's", ear to ear smiles, and in severe cases, an internet search history full of petfinder.com searches... View at your own risk!

We picked up the newest member of family last night - our blue merle Aussie pup from Windmill Aussies. His name is West and he's currently 8 weeks old. The hour-long trip home was quiet and vomit free - a good sign from such a young pup. Sonoma and Calhoun are warming up nicely to the idea of a new brother; the jury is still out with Pandi.... She'll come around I'm sure.
The first night in the crate went extremely well. After a nice round of petting and treats, he stayed in the crate and we shut the door. After only about 5 minutes of pouting he quieted down and fell asleep. We woke him up at 4 in the morning for a bathroom trip outside - on our account - and he fell back asleep in about three minutes afterwards.
Crystal and I played hooky on Wednesday to bond with Sonoma and West. We've played outside, inside, gone for a walk, and even learned to sit!! Such an exhausting morning lends to only one thing in the afternoon - PUPPY NAP! So we're all just laying around now in the living room, awaiting the next burst of puppy energy. Hopefully then Crystal and I will continue to have the energy to meet the needs of this needy life form.

Hopland Passport

This weekend Sonoma stayed at Vicki's while Crystal and I headed north with our friends Tim and Becca to the Hopland Passport in Hopland, CA. For $35 per person, we enjoyed wine tasting, food pairings, live music and shuttle service to about 10 wineries in the Hopland area for the weekend. We drove up on Friday night and kicked off early Saturday morning.
The first glass of wine was sipped at 10:30 AM on Saturday morning - perfet time for a red blend paired with a sirlion steak slider with chipotle mayo. At the beginning of the day, the crowd was a nice mix of people, old and young. The crowd, however, quickly trended younger as the more "senior" wineos were outlasted by us energetic crowd, fueled off tri tip, homemade Parmesean cheese, pizza, and - oh yeah - wine. We tried roughly 50 different wines, and somehow decided Jaxon Keys was our favorite. I'm sure the setup helped - a guy in overalls pouring tastings from a barrel, a jazz trio, a white tasting room, red tasting room, and italian food pairings (meatballs, portabella mushroom ravioli and butternut squash ravioli).

We ended our wine tasting at 5:30 in downtown Hopland and took a shuttle back to our hotel. The night finished with dinner at a Mexican restaurant - margaritas of course...

On the way back towards San Francisco on Sunday morning, we stopped at Jaxon Keys and split a case of wine. A good way to end a fun weekend!