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It's been a food filled weekend.

Scored a couple trays of leftover bbq pulled pork and now I'm trying to discover different ways to work that into dishes. I gave most of the food away since the two of us can't eat that much meat.

Saturday was a fun filled day. In the morning kali seminar focused on ground fighting. Of course, it turned out that I was one of the few people who could still really do the ground fighting with the rule of thumb being, "if you can still pick yourself up off the ground..." Alot of the guys in particular had already worn out their knees from the years of hard hitting karate and tae kwon do styles. Part of it looked more like movie stunts, like lying on your back and rolling away before a 3-sectional staff comes crashing onto the ground where you were. So yeah, you better move, I don't care how tired you are. We also practiced some throws on the grass and tumbling which I hadn't done in years and wasn't all that interested to tumble on the grass. All I can say is that gravity is exhausting.

Afterwards, spent the afternoon swimming with the nieces. They arrived around 3. We went to greet them at the mini-van where the parents were cleaning up both of the kiddie seats as the twins decided to puke in union. oh yeah. While we went swimming, the hubby did laundry of the car seat covers and accompanying clothing. That's not a whole lot of lounging either since the twins weren't all that happy sitting in their nice inflatable seats. And it took us forever to inflate those things! But I liked the water so much more than the ground. The nice part is that the kids aren't too grumpy when it's time to come out of the pool, since now they know that they can come back fairly often.

Since the sister-in-law is part of the Rosenblum Cellar wine club, we headed to Alameda and got there about 30 minutes before closing and tried out 5 of their wines. I ended up buying a bottle of their North Coast Zinfandel and the Santa Barbara Roussanne which is perfect for a nice summer day. The hubby stayed in the car with the kids. 2 out of 3 of them were fine with the whole thing.

Next stop was Hangar One, which is down the street from Rosenblum. A $10 fee gets you a glass and taste of all their spirits which was at least a dozen from their liqueurs to their whiskeys. We shared it between the three of us which was enough to just coat your tongue with a taste. You can get completely wasted if we had gotten one each. Then they wanted to try some absinthe which is a separate $10 tasting but again you get to keep the glass. They have one of the best absinthes on the market today. We waited for the ice to melt. Between the three of us we only managed to drink half of the glass, so I switched places with the hubby to watch the kids in the van.

Remember the 1 out of 3 kid? Well by the time I got there she was into full on tears, so I let the twins out of their car seats with the instructions that they remain in the mini-van, which was fine with one and only momentarily fine with the other because she was still concerned as to where mommy and daddy were. I took that one into my lap and ran through the gambit of songs she knew from "I have two hands", "Twinkle twinkle", and "itsy bitsy spider". And even though she kept crying a touch, the songs kept her from all out bawling.

The parentals and hubby returned. The hubby, with a bottle of their Qi White, which is a mixture of white tea and their spirits which I like so much better than Qi Black (though I have to say that their Qi Black is vastly improved from the initial batch I had tried over a year ago).

With the kids happy about swimming and the adults happy about the absinthe tasting we headed to our parentals house to give grandma and grandpa some enjoyment. E, the eldest, remembers the house and the people inside, so she loved being there. The twins, went into their shy mode for a few minutes before finally relaxing and running around. They still weren't sure about mom and dad, but they did like the bowl of fresh grapes they provided and couldn't get enough of eating those.

Sunday, went to class. I woke up with my sore and achy legs. Just because I can do the movement doesn't mean I don't pay for it the next day. The hubby had been interested in learning to braise food for quite some time but we didn't have the proper pot that went from stove to oven. Fortunately we had numerous gift certificates from Williams-Sonoma that were still unused (I love that California law that doesn't allow gift certificates to expire.) We ended up getting a 5.5 quart Le Creuset in flaming red, which felt like was half off since the gift certificates. We followed that up with watching Iron Man which was an awesome movie (again using some gift certificates), dinner at Fuddrucker's, then grocery shopping at Ranch for the oxtails and veggies to christen the Le Creuset.

Whew! The hubby finished cooking it at around midnight so we haven't tried it out yet. We'll find out tonight.

Grant it I need a weekend from my weekend, I am glad we have such a fun filled life.