32 is Pretty Awesome- Grape Creek Winery

For my 32nd birthday my husband and I went to visit Fredericksburg to do a little wine tasting and enjoy the sights of the Texas Hill Country.  

We visited three tasting rooms/wineries, walked the sleepy streets of Fredericksburg (everything but the restaurants close down at 5 or 6 pm), enjoyed an awesome dinner with some yummy game meat and then walked it all off by climbing Enchanted Rock the morning after. 

Since that's a lot for a day and a half, I'm just going to talk about our first wine-tasting stop in this post.

Hamming it up at Grape Creek like we do.

Lucky number one was Grape Creek Winery - their winemaker is a gentleman named Jason (we didn't get to meet him), our tour guide was Maureen. 

Some tools of the trade:

The containers in which they receive their grapes

The mashers

Shiny gadgets

Stainless Steel Fermentation Tanks

Some fun facts about Grape Creek:

• All their whites are aged in stainless steel
• All their reds are aged in French or American oak barrels
• At Grape Creek they have happy cows. They feed the cows on their property with the fermented skins from the red wine (the skins stay in with the reds during crushing and early in fermentation to give them the color).

Happy cows

Fun facts about all wines we learned at Grape Creek:

• Barrels are typically only used twice- they char the inside for flavor and the flavor is typically gone after the second aging
• When a wine is dry that means it has little to no sugar
• The date on the bottle is the vintage date- that's the date the grapes were picked

We learned these fun facts because we did the tour and tasting and it was totally worth the $32 per person.

We got to do a barrel tasting of a 2013 Sangiovese- from the following barrels:

• First-time use American oak
• Second-time use American oak
• First-time use French oak

This Sangiovese was a nice, easy-to-drink table red from all of the barrels. Justin said he preferred the French oak.  I’m thinking I did too, but the tasting pours were generous and at this point in time we were only fortified with a Whataburger taquito breakfast.

The winner!

**Disclaimer I don't know that much about wine but I am learning and this was an awesome learning experience. I started drinking wine with sweet Rieslings.  Justin naturally tended to favor the big bold Cabernet Sauvignons and over time I've dried out my palate and now tend to prefer these dry, bold flavors as well.** 

The tasting room for those on the tour was in the Barrel Room with all of the barrels aging.

View from the inside!

They had orange and blue pens for taking notes on which wines you liked best.  In my head that means they cheer for the Gators, but that's only cause Orange and Blue makes me swoon (proof positive is my Pinterest board).

Naturally, there were lots of barrels aging and they have them labeled with their own secret codes.  We tried to guess what barrels had what grapes, but apparently some of the coding also indicated what vineyard the grapes are from.

Shh, the code is a secret

Leading into the barrel room was the owner's wine library- impressive collection of his vineyard's wines.  

Homer Simpson would say "Donuts." We say "Wine."

Of course the door was locked. So all we could do was point.

While this area may not yet be seen as being on par with Napa/Sonoma and Paso Robles, it is coming into its own and it's only 45 minutes from our house versus a half day of air travel.  

Our glasses are empty.  More wine!

During our tasting we only had the reds.  And while we enjoyed tasting the reds - and I know what I said about our preferences - we both really enjoy their Cuvée Blanc. This wasn’t our first Grape Creek rodeo.   The Cuvée Blanc is a light, dry, white wine that can go with anything or nothing at all.  It is a go-to bottle for us that we can comfortably serve to anyone who comes to our house and feel confident that they will enjoy it.  It might not blow someone away, but it's also not going to make them grimace and ask for a chaser.

The timing of the trip was perfect because we'd almost gone through the case I bought in 2012 when I went for a bachelorette party.  When you buy the case it comes out to about $14.50 a bottle.  To us that's not an awful value for something you can serve anytime.

To learn more about the history of Grape Creek visit their website.

Where the Grape Creek wine magic happens.

Next time I’ll talk about our fun private tour at Becker Vineyards.

60 August Miles Success.

Boom! Done.  60 Miles in August. More than actually. Here's proof:

And it wasn't that bad. I was nervous about making it. But I laced up my sneaks, walked the pooch, climbed a pink granite rock the weekend of my 32nd birthday and am ready to tackle a new year and all the opportunities that lay ahead. 

Some of the sites along the way:

August 5k

One of my awesome running buddies and that hatch plotter:

Another awesome running buddy- we are in fact in matching shirts from the August 5K:

My lifelong running buddy who never let's me quit:

Let's see what happens in September. I spent the first two days in Vegas celebrating my best friend's bachelorette. Walking on the strip counts right?!

Whooah, we're half way there...

Livin' on a prayer...

At least I am.  I'm not livin' on a prayer- no, no- but I am half way there in my quest to complete 60 miles in the month of August (on Instagram and Twitter #60AugustMiles). Actually I am about 68.73% of the way there, having logged 41.24 miles as of yesterday.  I'm counting some leisurely dog walks (in purple), but I'd say that is still pretty darn impressive. This crazy idea is courtesy of Elizabeth (she's also more than 1/2 way there) and Erica (she did #100JulyMiles).

I use MapMyRun

Also, my shoes. My shoes! Here's a shot of what my "new" shoes looked like in comparison to my old shoes about 26 weeks ago.  

Here's a shot of the "new" shoes in comparison to the old shoes now.

It might be time for my some newer "new" shoes. Maybe I'll give that to myself for my 32nd birthday, which is this week. Not a bad way to ring in a new year. 

Only thirteen days left- counting today.  That means not even 1.5 miles per day and I'll be there.  Then I'll find a new tune to share.

In the meantime enjoy:

It's been too long, but I've been busy.

It's been too long since I last posted. And I'll readily admit that there's not enough hours in the day combined with the fact that I was too tired to divide my attention between watching Scandal and writing blog posts.  Some things just deserve a person's full attention.

Ya know?

Along with my commitment to JLSA (winning JLSA 2012-2013 Board Member of the year! what?!)

Justin's first JLSA meeting EVER!

                                               

The award!

helping a dear friend raise funds to beat blood cancers ($130,000+ for the LLS Man and Woman of the Year competition),

Justin, Bryce, Erin and me celebrating Team Bryce!

focusing on my running (which has gone past a jogrun to an actual run),

Beach 2 Bay half marathon relay team: Coastbusters (Lake, Erica, Matt, Mireya, Justin and Me).

#AintFraidOfNoCoast.  We finished in 4:43:21 with an avg pace of  10:48.

                                   
going to community events at awesome places like SAMA,

Justin, Elizabeth and me holding art we liked. Duh.

                               
keeping my Mom happy on Mother's Day (don't knock the bowling),
                                      

and visiting my best friend, Amy, in San Fran,

They have happy hours at places with views of things like the light show on the Bay Bridge. (Me, Tori and Amy) #LivinsEasy

                                   
I've also maintained my sanity by watching TV that makes the hubs retch (no pics of the poor programming choices or pics of Justin looking ill are necessary).

But I also go to Scorpions games with him, so you won't hear any real complaints.

They won!

So that's a quick recap of the last month.  What's new with you?

LLS 1st Annual San Antonio Herothon

We have some close friends who are big supporters of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. So when they innocently asked if we were going to do the 1st annual Herothon event in San Antonio, we heartily agreed.

This was before Spain, France, Christmas and a whole mess of time that meant we lacked the proper preparation because we did not make time to adequately train, even in a half-assed manner. We walked Wookie! 3 times last week. That and a 3- mile run our first day back from Europe is about all the working out we'd done. 

So when we were in the car at 5:50 this morning Justin calmly said "this is a stupid idea. We are going to die." 

I replied "You're driving the car, literally, so you can turn it around."

He didn't. 

We got to the parking lot and before forking over the $10 parking fee (a drop in the bucket in comparison to the race registration fee) he asked "are you sure about this, I don't want to disappoint you."

"You can decide, we have 4 hours to finish, I think we've got this," I said.

We paid and parked. 

And when we were under 15 minutes per mile for the first mile, Justin got pumped up. We weren't going to take 4 hours. No way. Even with a porta potty break at mile 1 (the lines right before the start were way too long). 

We were jovial enough to smile in front of the Alamo between miles 2 and 3:

And then we saw our pace at the mile 3 marker and I mentioned, that not only had Justin never trained for something like this, but he was rocking it, kicking ass and we might very likely beat my time from the SA R'n'R half this past November (3 hours 25 minutes)

Cue the competitive light bulb.  Justin was determined that I was going to set a personal record and he was going to make sure we did it together. 

In fact we were feeling so great between mile 5 and 6, when we saw a friend outside his house with his little one cheering the runners on, we stopped and chatted. 

Then we hit mile 8.56789 or something like that. Way more than half way complete, but still almost 5 miles from the end. It was the wall. But we we kept moving.

Mile 10-11, had signs from families cheering on runners and named those they loved and for whom the ran in honor, or in memory.  Then there were the survivors participating alongside us. 

Those last 3 miles were the hardest, but those constant reminders of why the event was happening were immensely motivating.  

We jogged the downhills, including the last big bridge (that we hit at the beginning too!), and into the finish line at 3 hours and 17 minutes.

And we were still smiling:

Justin received his first half marathon medal (my third):

And then we took a nap. 

Inaugural JLSA's Resolve for a Better SA 5K

Alternately titled: One of the many reasons I haven't posted much in the last year.

This morning the Junior League of San Antonio held it's inaugural Resolve for a Better SA 5K. Behind the name- it's still fairly early in the new year and getting healthy/being active is a common resolution and making a better SA is what JLSA is all about.

I was fortunate enough to be on the planning committee for this (in addition to other responsibilities for JLSA), but when you believe in something you make it happen.

And did these ladies make it happen. It helped that we took a couple of 5K planning trips to Port A, that really got our gears turning, and we all completed the audacious 12 races in 12 months. So we've done our race research.

At our last run- Color Me Rad, from left to right: Our fearless leader Mireya, Erica -Communications Extraordinaire, Kristen- Master of Volunteer Coordination, and Me- "We can always move the table later" Ariana

We had a veteran community runner in our midsts and he posted about the run on a Runner's World Forum. Thanks to Scottydog for supporting our event! You can read his post on the forum here.

Thanks to everyone who came out to support the event (almost 300 registered runners and walkers), signed up to fundraise and donated to those who fundraised!   You are helpling JLSA support over 60 Community Agencies with volunteer time and money. Things like this don't happen without people supporting them and awesomely patient spouses who let them get planned.

2012 Year in Review.

What to say about 2012?

It had it's ups and downs.

My family mourned the loss of my paternal Grandmother early this year. She lived a long full life and because of her we are all here. She was a mother, a traveler, an ice skater, a storyteller, an artist. She loved and is loved and she will always be remembered.

In comparison to that the other low points are not even blips on the radar. Her long full life is a reminder to constantly go and create my own stories and I definitely did my best this year.

I completed my second half-marathon, this time properly training and beating my first time by almost an hour. Thanks to a lovely group of ladies (and one of their committed husbands and the constant cheering on from my own) I completed one race a month, besides the half along with all of them.

I've had the honor of being on the Junior League of San Antonio Board of Directors as the Community Council Chair for the 2012-2013 year (the fun continues until May of 2013).

Justin and I traveled. Mostly together, sometimes separately. We went to Minnesota to remember my Grandmother, Leakey on the Frio River to celebrate friends, San Francisco to celebrate the 4th of July with Amy and Doug, Las Vegas to celebrate birthdays, Madrid/Toledo/Paris/Brussels/Barcelona to celebrate Christmas.

I went to Cabo and Rockport/Port Aransas to celebrate friendships and Austin to celebrate music at ACL.

We renovated our kitchen. Not with our own hands, unless writing checks counts. We are smart enough to know our limits. So soon we will travel to our dining room to celebrate cooking in our house.

It's been a year to remember. The ups and the downs.