Brunch at Moms

Retirement is treating me nicely. My Mom's retirement, that is! She invited us over to brunch to celebrate Jeff's birthday and prepared an amazing spread. Everything was homemade, and delicious. My two favorites were the Monkeybread, a wonderful concoction of cinnamon, sugar, pecans and biscuts, and an old family recipe for Banana Bread. Yum! She also prepared an elaborate easter egg hunt for the kids. I managed to catch them all in one shot in the picture below. So much fun! Thank you, Mom!

Garden inspiration

This is the season of pretty flowers, and I've found some pretty ones lately. The first two pictures are from my Mom's garden. She does wonders with pots! The last two are from our trip to Calistoga a couple of weeks ago.

Daddy's Birthday

Jeff celebrated a birthday last Friday, on April 18th. We had a quiet little celebration with the kids, complete with cupcakes. See Jeff, below, blowing out the candle with Julia's help, and Andrew looking on.

Then we left the kids with Adela, our wonderful housekeeper/backup-nanny (shown in the pic below), and I took Jeff out for dinner at a place that has live jazz on Friday nights. (Jazz is a new passion of Jeff's.)

Julia LOVES cupcakes!

Nothing better than a big box to play in!

Calistoga Getaway

Ahhhh, a getaway! Just what we needed, and we sure picked a great spot for it. We spent two nights at the Calistoga Ranch. We missed the kids, but it was nice to have a break from the constant caregiving.

Here I am enjoying what was perhaps the best feature of our room: an indoor-outdoor fireplace. This was taken just this morning as I was enjoying my coffee in the morning sun.

Many many thanks to Mom & Dad and Wendy for staying with the kids and allowing us to have this precious getaway!