Visit from the Bloomes

This past weekend we had the pleasure of hosting the Bloomes. With the weather issues in Buffalo, we had to stay around the house, but we still managed to have a lovely visit.

Susie's mom and dad took a couple days to drive out from Illinois and arrived in Fredonia on Thursday afternoon. We started off with a tour of the house and settled in for a quiet evening with a big dinner and then parked ourselves in front of the T.V. for the Cardinals game.

The next morning Harry got aquainted with Tybalt.

Then we ran some errands while Susie went to class. We all met up for lunch and a tour of campus. From there we headed out for a drive around town. We wanted to make sure they got a good look at the big city of Fredonia. The one major stop on the tour was Point Gratiot Park, which overlooks Lake Erie. As you can see from the picture, the storm that had come through the night before really stirred up the waves. It was rougher than we've ever seen it. (Granted, we have seen it much yet).

That evening we went out for dinner at the Fireside and had their famous bacon-wrapped scallops and other fine seafood before returning home to watch the Cardinals play again. We stayed up until amost midnight watching the game, but it was really fun to have people to cheer with when So Taguchi knocked one out of the ball park to take the lead.

On Saturday, everyone but Rachel was up early. Susie and her mom started wallpapering the foyer/stairway. This was more complicated than anticipated, with the first wall taking a very long time (3 hours), but once they didn't have to work around window trim, it started to go much faster. Harry was later joined by Rach, and they were instructed to just stay in the other room so as not to interrupt the wallpaper artisits at work, and they were more than happy to spend their day watching college football while sending support from the couch. Rachel did sneak into the wallpapering area just long enough to snap a picture of Susie and her mom working on what she thought was a very dangerous ladder set up.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, Susie and her mom informed us they had had enough wallpapering for the time being and were ready for some wine. Being in the middle of wine country, we hopped in the van and headed out to the Woodbury Vineyard and Winery. We tasted some wines and bought a few bottles, including a delightful cherry desert wine.

We also snapped a few pictures by the fields of grapes, most of which have been harvested already.


Next we moved on to the Vetter Vinyards. While there, we tasted some more wine. (Why not, right?) and bought a blueberry wine and a lovely blend called a Barcelona White. Here are Susie and her mom with their purchases. Don't you just love their matching mother-daughter coats?

Harry didn't drink any wine but enjoyed walking around the vinyards. Here he is inspecting a grape he found left on the vine.


We wrapped up the night with a wonderful dinner cooked by Susie and enjoying the Cardinals place a beautiful beat down on the Mets.

Sunday morning, Susie and her mom did some more wallpapering before lunch at the Ellicottville Brewing Company, which is a neat little micro-brewery in town. Then it was time for the Bloomes to leave. We were very sad to see them go, but we hope that they will come back out in the spring when we can make it up to Niagara Falls.