Sweet Summertime

I feel a little bit like a slacker blogger because I didn't post something sweet and meaningful in honor of Father's Day yesterday. If you read here you know my husband has been traveling to excess and we try to catch up, run errands, and have fun on the weekends so I tend not to blog on those days. My daughter1 did write something sweet on her blog so click here if you'd like to read what she had to say about her dad.

I'm so grateful to be in the parenting boat with my hubs. He is an excellent father who works hard in every way, who lives with a houseful of women and mostly understands us and the rest of the time pretends like he does, who can offer a less emotional perspective when its needed (and with three women in the house that is often the case) and, most importantly, he can make us all laugh. Even when we don't want to. Maybe especially when we don't want to and that is a gift. He has been a completely devoted dad from day one...he has changed diapers, styled little girls hair, buckled shoes, read stories, played games, sung lullabies (maybe mixed in with a little rock n' roll), danced across the kitchen with little toes atop his shoes, written special notes and letters, chaperoned field trips, encouraged, praised, advised, texted, listened and loved his daughters from the moment they took their first breath. Plus we all know who puts the fun in family fun at our house. All his girls are blessed.

We had a fairly low key weekend...travel and time zones have to catch up with a person sometime. Saturday afternoon we took a drive to a nearby winery located about 30 miles from here in the pretty New York countryside. We had a tasting and then ate lunch in their outdoor cafe. They have live music on the weekends so we listened to music and enjoyed our beautiful surroundings. The winery sits in an apple/pear orchard and you can also pick fruit in season.

This little corner of NY State is so pretty. There are lots of sod farms and onion farms up here and the dirt is dark black and looks so rich and healthy.

We meandered back thru the cute town which just happens to be where daughter2 was born almost 20 years ago and we reminisced about our drive to the hospital behind a John Deere that was moving very slowly and the hubs being annoyed that I'd waited a little long to say, 'time to go to the hospital'. He was more than a little concerned he was going to have to deliver the baby on the side of the road himself. He didn't. I'm sure daughter2 doesn't remember the hospital but I'm pretty certain the nurses remember her...such a beautiful baby who did not want to be out of my arms for a single second. She may have let everyone know it too.

Sunday was another low key day...we went out to breakfast to celebrate Father's Day (and also because I love to go out to breakfast). If you're not from the northeast you may not be familiar with the institution known as 'the diner' but NJ is kind of king of the Diner States. I know other parts of the country have diners but the best are found in the NJ/NY area. Its true...if you're in that part of the country you must eat in a diner at least once. Sunday we had breakfast in one that is actually semi-famous...it has been voted one of the 5 best in the state of NJ and that's no small thing since I'm guessing there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3257 diners in The Garden State. Okay, maybe an exaggeration but not by much. This particular diner was started by a Greek family as are most of the best diners I think, and its still family run.

A good diner has a menu that is no less than 10 pages long. Seriously. You can have omelets, a club sandwich, a turkey dinner, really good Greek and Italian food, a lobster feast, a big fat piece of homemade pie...you name it and its most likely on the menu at a good diner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack, dessert...whatever...it's all good. And you can get anything you want anytime of day at most diners. The place we ate yesterday was featured on the Food Network Program Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives back in November and the host, Guy with the crazy hair, gave it rave reviews. Their blueberry pancakes did not disappoint Sunday morning. Later we watched some golf, some World Cup, and we went to see the movie Killers with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher. It was cute and rest assured, that whole 30 day shred thing has definitely paid off for Ashton Kutcher. Just sayin'.

Happy First Day of Summer!