Girl Trip: Sonoma Edition

Girl trip 2012 was attached to a business trip of mine that took us to... wine country! As usual, we had a  great time. I'm sure you can imagine: wine, food, shopping, bocce...

Drinking wine, facetime-ing with Joo's brother and his fiancé and friends (right after he got engaged!)

At Ridge Vineyards (pretty)! They make wine there (yum). 

At Dry Creek Vineyard where Mandi drank her first rose (pink wine)!

At brunch with mimosas (which are made with sparkling wine) 

At Benzinger (where they make...)

Bocce at Imagery (where we drank...)

Big thanks to Stubbie for so many great food and winery tips!

Girl Trip 2011

Mandi's Wedding

We were in Chicago last week for Mandi and Ross' wedding. I seem to have stopped taking pictures after the wedding, so I don't have pictures of any non-wedding related activities or friends. But here are a few good shots of the festivities. Thanks to mom and dad for coming to Chicago to keep Carter entertained while we were involved with wedding festivities!

Mandi and Joo at the nail salon

Bren and Aarti at the rehearsal dinner

Mandi at the rehearsal dinner

Brunch on the big day!

The 'maids

The bride!

The cherry pie cutting

Mandi's Bach Weekend

Girl's weekend was extra special this year, as we were celebrating Mandi's impending nuptials! We surprised Mandi with a weekend in Blue Ridge, GA, where we ate, drank, hot tubbed, shopped, rafted and relaxed! (We also got to watch Aarti's Iron Chef challenge on NFNS with her!). Photos approved for public viewing provided below ;).

Our Cabin

View from our deck

Dinner!

Guns!

Browsing in town

More dinner!

Rafting!

Girl Trip in Los Angeles

Last weekend, I went to Los Angeles to spend some time with my girlfriends, Joo, Aarti and Mandi. We arrived late Friday evening, so we just hit In-n-Out burger and a liquor store and spent the evening catching up at our hotel.

On Saturday afternoon, (following a yummy tofu-scramble and mimosa brunch), we went to Santa Monica pier

We had our fortunes told by Zoltar (mine, en espanol!)

We rode the baby roller coaster (and learned that Aarti is the biggest scaredy-cat of us all -- with the MOST ear-piercing scream)

We soaked up the sun on the pier while listening to hits from the 70s, and then took a stroll on the beach

We spent Saturday evening at Sally and Mikael's (adorable!) house where we got to meet sweet Henry

Sunday afternoon we finally experienced the wonder that is Father's Office (Aarti's been blogging it's praises for ages)

Apparently, it's okay to order any of their many, many beers, but you are only allowed to order the blue cheese burger to eat

Sunday afternoon, I got to catch up with Mike Kass. He made me drink my first-ever Appletini.

Sunday night was spent cooking and celebrating Mandi's 30th!

Aarti made an amazing dinner and an impressive cake that we all got to help construct

Aarti and Bren performed the sweetest song that they wrote together!

It was such a great trip!

Girl Talk

I got to talk to some of my girlfriends face-to-cyberface this weekend. Thanks to ooVoo, we were able to do a three-way videocam call. Next time, we're going for a four-way. With just a glass of wine, a computer, and a videocam, we could pretend that we were having a night out together, despite our very long distance!

Girl Trip!

Here are some long overdue shots from girl weekend at Mandi's. Aarti already posted some good ones here and here, so I won't duplicate.

The men in Mandi's life: Ross (who got the stamp of approval) and Sir Charlie Francis Murphy Bacon (who got a tentative stamp of approval pending how fast our scratches heal...)

There were some drinks. Red ones.

There was some train riding (and reminders of how much better the NYC subway system is!)

And, yes, there was a wee bit of dancing.

Girl Trip Preview

For Mother's Day, I'm getting to spend the weekend in Chicago with my girlfriends while Carter and Thomas have a boys weekend at home (thanks, Thomas!). More on my trip when I get home to download my pics, but here's one that Mandi's man Ross took of the four of us.


And here's one that I took of all FIVE of us using my monkey arms!

Joo's Visit

Joo (or, "Boo", as she and Carter have decided she should be called) is visiting this weekend! She is ostensibly here to see all of us, but she seems a little more interested in one of us...

Silly Girl Pics

Since Joo asked for them, here are some "silly pics of us girls" the night before Patrick & Kirstin's wedding. Really, how hard is it to take a decent picture?

Aarti is here!

Aarti is here visiting for the week! Carter is starting a new daycare tomorrow, and he has to be "phased-in" over the next three days (meaning that he goes for just a couple of hours for the first three days, and we stay with him for progressively shorter times). Aarti is going to be helping out by keeping Carter during the day when he is not at the new daycare. We'll keep you posted on how the phase-in is going.

Aarti, Joo, Carter and I had a fun day in the park yesterday.