OK-anagan!

It's been ages since my last post, but Cole and I have been very busy lately. What with this lovely summer weather and all, we've been having our fair share of sunshine adventures (and some great naps too!).

We traveled last week to Penticton (in BC's fantastic Okanagan region, for those non BCers reading this!) to spend a few days relaxing with Bonnie & Jasmine. Thank you to Auntie Patti (Great in relationship to Cole and in general greatness too!) for letting us crash at your pad, the wonderful meals, company and for teaching me how to make great porridge.

The trip was so relaxing - some sunny days, some not-so-sunny ones too, lots of photo-taking excursions and some great late-night hot-tubbing after Cole was asleep. Wow - that was a lot of hypens... I wanted to go up to take photos of the vineyards & wineries (or "wineyards", as I hear some might call them...) and we certainly managed to do that. I think we visited 7 all in all. I only managed one tasting - and a tiny 2 sips of one white at that - since a) Cole was strapped to my chest and b) I was driving... The way to do a proper round of tasting tours would be to go on a bus maybe (yeck), or with a non-drinker as a chauffeur!

Mission Hill had lovely Mediterranean-esqe architecture, but the most surly tour staff who referred to Cole and said "we love babies - they are our future wine-drinkers, but..." and told us that basically if he fussed we weren't welcome. Well, IMHO only a moron would take a crying baby on a winery tour, but honestly it was said so rudely and then we were ignored! I don't generally buy a lot of wine anyway, and never theirs - I look for smaller brands and sadly the graphic designer in me shops based on graphically interesting labels usually, which has yielded many pretty bottles and gross wines. But I definitely will be giving them the official snub now, after they were so rude to us! We didn't take the tour. Instead we took our perfectly lovely baby and got a move on. The grounds were very pretty though.

Red Rooster had a nice place up on the ridge above Penticton - their 2007 Bantam is great. Thanks for the tip Jas! Cole seems to be enjoying himself here - maybe he was confused about the price of wine? A $30 bottle in the city only cost $14 at the winery! Stock up, I guess? ;-)

Stoneboat was a really nice little place near Oliver with great people and I have a bottle of their 2005 Nebbia blend tucked away for some future enjoyment.

But my favourite stop had to be Burrowing Owl. The most beautiful estate outside of Oliver and just gorgeous all around. And very nice people! And, to top it off, the most lovely wine I've had in ages... Their 2007 Pinot Gris is really delicious.

Aside from visiting the "wineyards", we relaxed, walked around the beach, visited the carnival (and got cotton candy!), ate cherries, watched the hummingbirds and generally had a good time. Cole even got his first taste of the high-life when we put his little feet into the hot tub. He really loves water. I'm going to have to take him swimming soon!

My only trouble is that Cole's sleep pattern seems a little screwy now after a week of things being quite different than at home. We're trying to fix that... :-)

I also bought a TON of fruit at Bears in Keremeous on the drive home. Seriously, I think I have a metric ton of produce - peaches, cherries, apricots as well as green beans and tomatoes too. So good! I made some apricot jam earlier this week and a tasty peach upside-down cake yesterday which was so good. I might make just a couple jars each of canned cherries & apricots, since I have so much...