Santa Barbara

Welcome to Santa Barbara! Why were we in Santa Barbara, you ask? Well, while I was pregnant with Lucie, I thought going to a continuing education conference would be a really productive use of my maternity leave. Also my mental map of California is a bit dodgy - in my head, Santa Barbara was just south of Paso Robles. Which it is, if you define "just south of" as "almost two hours on the highway". By the time I realized that it was further away than I thought, and we'd have to take a baby with us, it was too late, I'd already paid the tuition.
All the fun and all the learning went down at the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort. I used to think staying at the conference-designated hotel was for suckers, until I had kids. Now I get it. Also, they hand out warm chocolate-chip cookies in the afternoon. Anyway, Fess's place is on the waterfront, with lots of fountains and plazas and lawns to serve your nuptial and kidney walk needs. It's also adjacent to Chase Palm Park, which has a turtle pond and a playground. That came in handy for Daddy while Mommy was at school.

We had a really memorable dinner at The Palace Grill. You don't get much Creole cuisine west of the Rockies - and it was actually good. I had redfish for the first time in forever. Also they do this sort of sweet thing where they play Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" as all the staff goes around and toasts with the customers. It might have been charming, except Brennan and Lucie found the experience terrifying. I guess it was the volume. I dimly remember feeling the same way about the birthday song at Farrell's.

Although there didn't appear to be any lasting damage -

Saturday started sunny, but quickly progressed to classic coastal CA fog and chill. We spent the better part of the day waiting to get into "must visit" restaurants: Julia Child's favorite taqueria, La Super Rica, and Brophy Brothers, at the harbor-

for the record: La Super Rica, very good, although still perplexed by the wait; Brophy Bros, meh.

No family adventure is complete without a visit to the local grapes. Plus we were in Sideways country, and couldn't possibly miss seeing where Miles drank from the spit bucket.

It was a gorgeous day, and so beautiful out there - also there were lots of cattle for Brennan to moo at. We're not sure what Lucie thought of it all-

Brennan also really liked the windmills.
Here we are at the Fess Parker winery, AKA "Frass Canyon", where Miles drank from the spit bucket. This is where we learned kids aren't technically allowed at the bar in tasting rooms, since they are under 21, a rule we've unconsciously been breaking on a regular basis since Bren was 2 months old. They were nice about it, though - the minors stayed with Daddy 10 feet from the bar, and Mommy ferried the wine glass back & forth. Which we kept, by the way - we've been too cool (and space-restricted) for the "complimentary with tasting fee logo glass" for years, but this one features a single, small, etched coonskin cap. I couldn't resist.

Our last morning we visited the beach before hitting the road. Bren found a really good stick.

It was a nice trip, but after 4 nights in the same hotel room, it's nice to be back home, too.

Hotel California, part two

Lucie, 3 months old: now really starting to resemble a human. Still very floppy, though, as evidenced below-

We'll call this next section Portraits: Guess Who Finally Got the Hipstamatic App on her iPhone -

(Hipstamatic, for those of you my age and older, allows you to make your pictures look like they were taken on a crappy, old, made-in-Azerbaijan or Bangladesh, plastic camera with weird, blown-out film that has been rolling around in the bottom of your camera bag since 1973. Except you do it with your phone, so those of you younger than me or simply less into camera-nerdery may not fully appreciate what a tremendous improvement this is over the previous way of doing this. Which was buying a Holga in some museum gift shop, dragging yourself down to the real photographers' lab in some crappy industrial part of town to buy the special film, locking yourself in a closet to load the camera, only to realize if you could barely figure it out when you could see you certainly couldn't do it by feel, getting funny looks while shooting with said camera, feeling like a fraud when you drop your film off at the real photographers' lab, and throwing out 14 of the 15 shots that didn't work because of the unpredictable lens and light leaks. So yes, I will buy that app for $1.99, thankyoustevejobs.)
Anyhoo, onto more visitors. We were lucky to get a quick visit from the Dukes, who despite having the weekend off from their own small children, were willing to bunk in our tiny Romper Room AND brave eating in a restaurant with Bren & Lucie.
I only have one picture, though. John and Suzanne always bring out the college freshman in me, and I somehow believe that I can: a) stay up past midnight; b) drink wine for 5 hours in a row; c) wake up feeling fine and go skiing/drive to my cousin's wedding/take a toddler to the state fair/etc. Clearly, this is not the case. I was exhausted and this was all I could manage.
Brennan felt it was his turn to have a guest, so we invited Ian over for a fancy dinner of grilled cheese and apple slices, and a rousing night of watching Thomas videos and playing trains. Ian declined to remove his coat the whole evening, but seemed to have a good time, and was certainly more polite than Mr. No-It's-My-Train.

Next guest - Auntie Kris! Bren took her to "go see fish" (the California Academy), which was lots of fun, and Mommy finally got to enjoy a glass of wine with lunch at the fancy cafeteria. I actually eat lunch there a lot, but feel weird drinking wine when my lunch dates are a toddler and an infant. Brennan got to have a special penguin cookie with cool black sugar sprinkles that turned his lips black, like a tiny Goth. I'll have to get the pictures from Kris, though.

As I mentioned in the last post, one great thing about visitors is I get a chance to sight-see in my own town. I've driven over the Golden Gate Bridge I don't know how many times, but haven't actually walked on it in about 5 years. You don't really appreciate the size, the noise, and the length of the drop to the bay when you're in a car. You also miss out on sights like this:

In addition to scenic suicide hot lines, I also took Kris to the Columbarium and Dynamo Donuts. You might think those places are unrelated, but eat enough maple bacon apple donuts and you'll need a nice place for your cremains. Also we took advantage of a rare break in the rain to take the dog for a nice hike in Marin.

We loved our visitor-filled March - Brennan especially! But now it's time to pull our act together and take it on the road. Clean up, 'cause our next stop is Santa Barbara.