Back in Town

It's time to clean the sand out of my suitcase. Sort the clothes for the wash, and put away mini shampoo bottles. We've picked the dog up from the kennel and she is settling back into her routine. Our vacation is officially over.

As I am usually the "planner" for vacations, I sometimes get a little nervous if everything is going to turn out as I want it to. Is the hotel going to be nice? Are we staying in a nice area? Is there going to be enough to do? Fortunately I would answer "yes" to all those questions for this vacation. Thankfully everything turned out great. We went to Santa Barbara and LA because we were at a Charity Black Tie for a great non-profit back in May, and in all my drunkeness I bid on this vacation and we won it!

We started in Santa Barbara, and we fell in love with the small city. We hit up about 18-20 wineries (just little sips for me) while we were there. I think we've been to Napa Valley about 4 times, so I didn't really think Santa Barbara would compare to Napa. I'm not a fan of being wrong, but was happy to be so this time around. The wineries there are gorgeous and give Napa wineries a good run for there money. We decided before we left we didn't want to be Sideways "groupies," (we are too cool, obviously) but it turned out we pretty much went to every place the movie was filmed. It's one of my favorite movies so it was fun to go to the wineries that they hit.

After Santa Barbara we headed to LA. As part of our winnings, Jimmy Kimmel Live tickets with "VIP access" were included. We grabbed a couple friends living in the LA area and went on Wednesday night. We saw Russell Brand and Christina Hendricks. Probably not the best show in the world, but it was pretty fun nonetheless. I am even on tv for about 10 seconds at the end of the show. I think the best part was getting to sit in the green room before the show playing pool, having some drinks and playing Ms. Pacman for free. And Russell Brand and the Jimmy Kimmel band were hanging out there also. I felt pretty cool I must admit.

That pretty much rounded out our trip. Happy to be back, but sad to face our every day realities again. Not sure if this IVF worked or not, but will be finding out more this weekend. In the meantime, I'll keep busy sorting out our wine purchases, doing laundry and putting the suitcases away. We are officially back to reality.