What a nice weekend we had! Saturday night we had our friends Jo and Peter over for a, "US Wine Night." She's from New Zealand and he's from Yorkshire, UK so their exposure to US wines is similar to our pre-living-in-Australia exposure to Australian wines. There aren't many to choose from over here! Over the past few months we've had various guests schlep wines to us as we planned for the night (think of it as their payment for room and board ;)). The stand out was the 2008 Belle Glos (Clark & Telephone) Pinot Noir from the Santa Maria Valley, CA. Next in line was a 2007 Charles Krug Generations from Napa Valley, CA. It was good to catch up with them after their honeymoon in the Maldives. I'm envious of where they stayed!
In preparation for the holiday season, I made my first batch of Aunt ZZ's Toffee - 10 1/2 pounds of it! I've learned (with help from my darling husband, the taste tester) that one should not skimp on the chocolate on toffee - this batch is divine. Can't wait to share it with our friends! Thank you to our family and friends who were kind enough to lug Nestle's Chocolate Chips with the wine from the US. We can't get them here and the toffee wouldn't be the same! :)
Yesterday afternoon, after nursing hangovers from the wine night we dragged ourselves to the movies to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (part 1). It was much darker than the previous HP's but still very entertaining. David was so excited to go see it - he's such a fan! We almost went on opening night but decided holding out 3 days until the weekend would have to do. We went to dinner with Janine and Niels at the Brookevale Hotel just next to the mall. The setup is pretty cleaver - you buy your raw steak/fish/chicken and grill it yourself on the grills in the center of the room. It's almost like having a home-cooked meal but without having to do the dishes.
This morning I had a wonderful long run - 65 degrees and sunny. It ended with stretching at Manly Beach where I saw a school of dolphins!! I had to watch them for a bit before I could figure out what they were - the dorsal fins were popping up out of the water all over the place - I thought they were sharks at first but then realized by the way they were smoothly moving through the water that they must be dolphins. I bet there were 15+!
We finally got the Mac reformatted and all the programs reinstalled - I'm SOOOO thankful that David worked his magic to protect all of our 8000 pictures in iPhoto. I would have been devastated to have lost them! As I type, I'm mesmerized by the picture slide show on Apple TV and listening to Christmas music - it's Thanksgiving week after all! Don't tell David, though. Being a Christmas nut, we have strict no-Christmas-music-before-Thanksgiving rule in our household. David would be ready to throw the sound system out the window if we didn't limit the amount of Christmas music I could play every year ;)
Thanksgiving is hands-down my favorite holiday - it's the type of holiday where you can wish any passer-by a, "Happy Thanksgiving!" and they will be appreciative and wish the same for you. Clearly it's a US holiday so we don't really get to celebrate it the same way here. A few Aussies may wish me a happy Turkey Day (or some other cute shortened version of the name) but I won't get to make blueberry muffins and watch the Macy's Day parade while prepping the stuffing for the bird. The house won't be filled with the wonderful smells of Thanksgiving and the clatter of dishes and chairs being moved about to set the table for 20... It makes me sad that we don't get to have those experiences here. Thanksgiving is one of the things I miss most about being in the US. David and I will celebrate in our own way - I'll make a roast chicken, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and peas/corn but it will only be the two of us that night for dinner and we will have worked all day. *Sigh* I suppose that means I'm just saving up a couple years of Thanksgiving to have a blow-out version when we get back! Look out family! You'd better plan on a big one at our house that year!! :)
~LAA :)
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