Drunk Bee...Stealing My Wine!

Besides the fact that "Lonnie" and I got to go on a real date this weekend (like where we actually talked to each other with words that didn't involve "Kai, stop touching people" or "Ayla stop eating that"), we also had the chance to do some good ole Alabama wine tasting!  It was a packed Saturday full of fun for everyone: wine for us, train ride for the kids.  We didn't even know there would be a bouncy house with the train ride, so we essentially became the coolest parents ever...if only for 30 minutes.

Ozun winery is about an hour from Montgomery and is actually a stop on the historic train route (you can do wine train rides).  We, however, had planned to drink first and then catch the Pumpkin Patch train.  We planned for all the kids to be asleep by the time we reached the winery.  Apparently, when children smell that you are about to do something that would be better done without them, they develop insomnia.  In this case, our kids smelled wine.  Thankfully, the winery had outdoor setting and we could let them run free.  That was until they saw the train and the bouncy house near the tracks!  After that it was a fight to convince Kai that we would, in fact, ride the train and jump in the bouncy house, just not while Mommy and Daddy were trying to taste wine.  And we were constantly taking our wine glasses away from Ayla, who seemed to think it was juice (luckily she didn't drink any).  The one bright spot was that the wine was essentially terrible.  We tasted about 15 different selections and I dumped all but 2!  The Norton grape, native to Alabama, must be grown with turpentine because that's pretty much how all the wine smelled.  It reminded me of a nasty moonshine that "Lonnie" brought back with him from Krysygstan, which I think we actually used as turpentine.  So the fact that we really couldn't relax and enjoy the wine was irrelevant because we didn't like it anyway.  However, it did draw in some bees, one of whom decided that the Petit Port was awesome (that was one of the good ones) and took a dive.  After we fished it out, it proceeded to drunk munch on an apple, and that was spectacularly hilarious.

The train ride was pretty cool.  It's an historic train with indoor and open cars.  Kai spent the whole time just repeating "ride the train, want to ride the train" while we were on it!  And then the bouncy house, of course, was the only thing the kids did at the pumpkin patch.  On the train ride back we rode in the open car, which did not involve any "grab him before he jumps" comments, which I deem as a success.  We also found out they do a Polar Express train, so that is now on our list of "cool things to do in Alabama."  It seems that list keeps getting longer, which means we may actually be liking it here.  Except for the mosquitos....