Memorial Day Weekend 2012

On Memorial Day Weekend, we were out in the bay area to celebrate Pat's graduation from Sacramento State and his 30th birthday party in San Francisco.  Fortunately, we also got to squeeze in a wine tasting day in Napa too!

Michael's good friend Schieffer hooked us up with wine tasting and gave us a very detailed tour of Keever Vineyards, where he currently works.

Schiffer knows a lot about wine... more than I ever wanted to know... haha!

But it was really cool to see how a small, family-owned winery makes its wine compared to a large-scale operation.

My childhood friend Jen and her husband Drew also joined us in Napa with their new bundle of joy, Miss Zelda!  She was just perfect and I couldn't not get enough of her chubby little cheeks!

The next day, we got to hang out with my other childhood friend Janelle and check out her awesome new apartment just steps away from Fisherman's Wharf.  It was such a gorgeous day walking around with her and boyfriend Greg after they had us over for a wonderful brunch at their swanky new pad.

Then we met Ming-Cee and Pat at the W Hotel for the celebration!  If you don't already know, Pat has a twin so it was double trouble as we celebrated both Pat and Matt's 30th birthday with siblings (and a cousin) with our significant others from both sides of the family (16 of us in total!).

Matt's wife did a great job organizing the dinner reservations and Ming-Cee did an awesome job organizing the hotel accommodations and the after party at the Wreck Room on Nob Hill.

Friends drove and flew in from all over California and we had a super fun evening.  And of course Eva, our oldest childhood friend, was there too!

We all had such a great time... complete with funny photos!

The rest of the weekend we recovered in Walnut Creek with mom and dad.  We cooked dinner one night and Michael played doubles tennis with daddy at one of his tennis clubs while mom and I went to the garden store and spruced up mom's balcony garden for summer.  And lastly, for those of you that live in DC, we saw a marionberry pie at Whole Foods!

It turns out that a marionberry is a variety of blackberry, but for those of you that don't know the notorious DC Councilman and former DC mayor, Marion Barry, you can read about his very interesting political career, crack cocaine scandal, and recent Asian American controversial comments on wikipedia.  He's a character.  Unfortunately, the marionberry pie is not sold in DC area Whole Foods Markets... we checked!

It was a fantastic trip with perfect weather and we wish we could have stayed a few more days.  There's always a part of us that misses the bay area, but especially in the summertime when we have to return home to high humidity and temperatures in the 90s in DC!