Birthdays, Celebrations and Life Lately

over the weekend we had two birthdays to celebrate!

first off, a little sunset picnic up at lava cap winery, where jorden works, to celebrate that crazy man's 27th!

i love the mingles. who doesn't? here are all jorden's siblings: kara, jared, and jacob. 

elsie's family owns the winery. her grandfather was a geologist and discovered that the volcanic soil of this hillside was perfect for growing fine grapes.

elsie is the dearest soul; she is the perfect combination of frisky, wild, sweet and down-to-earth. and she is the best little mama! we've become really close in the last year or so.

here she is wearing her own irish mama's pink sweater and gorgeously appliqued dress from the late 70s.

this is her man, justin, an incredible drummer, and their adorable baby, zillion.

the whole scene.

reading to oliver and zillion. these boys are besties.

for a spontaneous picnic, we had the best food: two different types of veggie burgers with all the fixings and lots of crunchy, yummy side dishes. becky prepares the goods....

 

with a plastic knife!

 

this is happiness: friends, food, family, bikes, wine, avocados, babies, daffodils, beer, lemonade, laughter...

and a patio heater for when the sun goes down! we stayed till the moon rose and named every constellation we could find. it was a gorgeous evening.

next morning we got ready to head down to the bay area for darin's grandma's 80th!

we got to hang out with his brothers, dave came up from LA (missing his new baby son terribly!) and that's sinjin on the far left.

darin's uncle had a popular 1960's garage band called The Just Six. 

they've been getting back together for years now to rock all different sorts of crowds.

Grandma DeeDee loves them, and it was her only wish that they play for her 80th birthday, which made it a pretty rockin party for an 80 year old.

here's darin and his grandma watching the music.

i got my groove on for a while

then went out back to play with darin's little cousin mackie, who was making camellia stew.

she's the smartest and most creative little girl; here she is making me a lei and telling me all about hawaiian folklore.

she made me bouquets, "baby toys," and....

a giant peace sign. (poor DeeDee's garden!)

DeeDee and the boys. 

her very favorite is when they cover john lee hooker's "boom boom." she goes wild.

the fam: 

dave, mackie, uncle mike, aunt annette, grandma deedee, matthew, sinjin, debby, darin and i.

so glad the sun was out and we got to enjoy a couple of celebratory march days.

hope you all had some fun too!

here in my town, now the rains have finally come and we're all cozy.