Meritage Archives - lifeisarun.net

Wine, Wedding & What Not

So from our Wordless Wednesday post yesterday if you assumed we had a FUN Saturday night at our wine dinner party then your assumption was correct! 🙂

Pretty much everyone that came has already made an appearance on this blog, so if you’ve been hanging around the LIAR blog [yes, we just abbreviated our name, ha] their names might sound familiar to you!

Beth, Heidi, Teal, Kate & Mandy

Doubt we could have gotten them to pose for a picture together so we got the boys in deep discussion 🙂 L to R: Bitner, Brent, Michael, Josh & Brian (sorry it's your back) oh and cute little Meranda!

Also, please remember this was the day after our cleanse! 🙂 We had a lovely dinner with crockpot roast, twice baked potatoes, asparagus salad, a pasta dish with butternut squash and nuts. But special mention should be given to the dee-lish appetizers we started with pears & melon topped with prosciutto and a balsamic glaze and tomatoes & mozzarella topped with the same balsamic glaze. Are we making your mouth water yet?

Most of the food

It was a wonderful night of good wine, good food and great friends! Now we just need to plan the next Wine Dinner Party! If you’re a wine lover here were all the wines we had to choose from that night. Ha 🙂 Also, if you remember back in October when Teal went to Sonoma for the weeekend well then she brought the 2007 Allure Meritage from Williamson Wines and 2007 Topel Pinot Syrah both from that trip!

The wine dinner was also a perfect night for Beth to tackle another wedding item – get a flower girl! Mandy & Josh have THE most precious little girl – bias? No way! She is! Ha If it’s possible for someone to adore a child before she’s even born then that’s exactly how it was for Beth. Little Meranda was the first kid born to one of Beth’s best friends, so that probably has something to do with adoring her before she was born. But she’s going to be the cutest little flower girl in Beth’s wedding! By the time the wedding is here Meranda will be 3 years old! Oh, how time has flown by!

Beth has also asked two more ladies to be apart of her big day as Bridesmaids! Last week she sent flowers to her soon to be sis-in-law and it actually was perfect time! Lindsay had kind of had a crummy week and hopefully she meant it when she said the arrival of the flowers Friday afternoon and asking her to be apart of the wedding made her day! So lucky to be gaining an awesome sister-in-law who is the same age! Just a couple nights ago Beth asked her sister-in-law Tiffany to be a Bridesmaid. Tiffany has officially been apart of the Lynch family for not quite a year and a half, but it feels like so much longer! She just fits right in! The fun thing is that she and Beth are the same age too! Beth, her sister, Kate and Tiffany try to once a month go out for sushi and it just so happened that the sister sushi night was coming up, so Beth knew that’s when she’d ask Tiffany.

A fun fact about Tiffany is that she’s a quarter Japanese. Since fortune cookies are actually based on a Japanese cracker even though you mainly get them from a Chinese restaurant they are originally Japanese [looked it up on wikipedia, people!] Beth knew that’s how she had to ask her!

Beth's brother, Scott and sister-in-law, Tiffany

The same night as sister sushi night Beth asked if Tiffany if her oldest boy, Wesley could be the Ring Bearer. Wesley did such a good job at Scott & Tiffany’s wedding that it’s like he’s a pro already! Bridesmaid dresses have also been picked for the most part! 🙂 Are those allowed to be shown? Haha, the Bridesmaids get their choice of style and Beth picked the designer, color and fabric for each dress! You are not going to get an update on if there is or is not a caterer for the wedding because there are still 12 days left in January to work on that one. 🙂

Have you noticed we are a little obsessed with the diptic app for putting multiple pictures into one picture?

Running in Wine Country

So based on Beth’s post yesterday you have probably gathered that Beth and I ran our long runs separately this week, but no fear, our running duo is still together! Thank God! Also if you have been following for a while you might have known that I am still in grad school- 3 yrs to be exact, and I have become really good friends with my fellow grad student, Susan. She had a milestone birthday this year- 40 – she really does not look or act a day over 30! After long deliberations in our ridiculous drives together to and from Denton during the week we settled to travel to wine country and San Fran to celebrate, so Thursday we headed out. I was of course nervous to fly as usual and have never flown with Susan before. We lived!! I also worried about how I would fit the long run it as it was going to take at least 2 hours, but based on our plans for the weekend I decided the best day to do it would be Friday morning before we got into anything in wine country.

Friday I woke up and checked the weather – 46 and heavy fog. Had I been in Texas I would have wanted to stay in bed, but nevertheless I got up and got going. Here is a shot of what I first saw across the street.

I headed down not knowing anything about the area and was just hoping to find a route. I ran all through the town of Windsor which is gorgeous! The streets are lined with farms and wine vineyards. Here are just a few shots from my run. It was probably the prettiest run I have ever taken and am so glad I decided to get up and brave the fog!

I have had a lot of pain and a lot of trouble running for the past few weeks. I have had to change shoes, alter my stride, walk, and just overall beat myself up about how bad I had been running. This run kind of made me feel a lot better! I ended up running 12.71 which was close to a mile more than planned- I really wanted 14, but worried about how long everyone on the trip had been awake and didn’t want people to have to keep waiting for me. I was glad to get it over with and also proud of the fact that I made it that far alone – that does not happen very often.

The rest of the day was dedicated to WINE!! We traveled about 15 minutes to Healdsburg and decided to stay there for the day. We went to 4 tasting rooms and a champagne bar. The first was by far our favorite so I will give them a little shout out. We went to Williamson Wines which gave a complimentary wine tasting with complementary food pairings, which was unheard of anywhere else, and they were awesome people. They had an Australian accent so for me I could have listened to them all day! I ended up buying there Meritage Red – SOOO GOOD!

After literally 5 hours of tasting we made our last stop at the Champagne bar for big cheers to 40! One of the girls on the trip ended up becoming a member there so we had free champagne for the morning and of course had to have mimosas!

Saturday we headed back to San Fran and for the sake of your time and reading pleasure I will just show you some pictures and leave you with the fact that I have NO CLUE how anyone runs the San Fran Marathon! San Francisco is INSANE with the hills and I was literally winded walking around. We did make it down Lombard (the crooked road) which was probably my favorite part! I was the driver for the weekend and am so glad I got to drive down that road! I have always wanted to!