early morning thoughts: brew festival

We had this great idea at Christmastime to get our siblings up here for the brew festival this summer, and it almost worked for us! My sister was already planning on coming up to attend with 3 of her friends, so our gifts to the brothers were plane tickets for them to join in on the fun. Unfortunately, my brother had a concert to perform last Saturday (which I heard was amazing! Can't wait to see the video!) and Corey's brother had a wedding engagement that he couldn't miss... and 2 of my sister's friends backed out as well... so we ended up with a much smaller party! We ended up staying home on Saturday when Heather and her friends were at the festival, just because it was right in the middle of a nap, and Saturday afternoon/evening tends to be the time when you can't turn around without bumping into someone's beer (which stinks when you're the size of 2 people, and even more when you're pushing a stroller). We went on Sunday afternoon instead, which was much less crowded -- but they were out of about half of the beers due to Saturday night. Oh well, next year we'll head over on Thursday or Friday and call it good :-)

Corey's used to drinking alone when we go to the brew festivals (although last winter we had some friends join us and that was better!) so it was fun for him to have my sister there. Usually he says, "wanna try it??" to me and I look at him like he's trying to poison me... then I settle for smelling it, but all I can really say is "yup. Smells like beer." This time he had someone to swap tastes and compare notes with, which made both of us feel better!

The winter ale festival is the one that Corey gets REALLY excited about, so maybe we need to stop trying to get family up here during the summer and shoot for that one instead. Anyone? Anyone? Well, one of these years...

(I should note two things: 1)my sister spent the weekend trying to teach Benjamin to say "Beer" and thus should be considered a bad influence, and 2)when we walked into the festival and had IDs checked, the man looked at my ID and then at my belly and said, "pregnant?? sheesh" like I was going to be the one drinking. Yeah, and while you're at it could you pass over a mug for my 15 month old?? thanks.)