I love summer. I love outdoor activities, I love ice cream on a hot day, and I love very tired children. I also love me a week-long summer vacation. Preferably at the beach. The Beach Vacay is an 8 year old tradition is our household, though 8 years ago I must say it looked very different. But, no infant was gonna rain on our sunshiny parade. And neither was any infant/toddler pair.

I forced those babies to brave the sand, the wind, and the waves practically from birth. I know. My parenting is totally questionable. But my kids are tough guys.

I made ‘em that way.

This year, our 8th year of Beach Vacay, we decided to mix it up a bit. We usually go to Cape Cod, just a quick afternoon’s road trip from where we live in Boston. This year, however, we decided to book it down to the Outer Banks. In North Carolina.

A mere 17 hour drive away.

Stop looking at me like that.

I figured, what the hell, right? We’ll just hop in the car because flying a family of four, well…we spent that $1000 on dealing with our busted hot water heater last week.

So, we drove. In the car. From Boston to North Carolina. With two children under 5.

Oh, Yes. We did.

And it was all peachy keen, until we hit the bridge to the Outer Banks. We were just 25 miles from the house we’d rented with another family. And traffic was moving at 2 miles an hour. If that. It took us 4 hours to go 25 miles. True story.

If I have to sing John Jacob Jingle Himer Schmidt one more time in my life, I will fall over and die.

Luckily, my husband lost it early on and then napped out his anger for the remainder of the bumper to bumper ride. This left me driving, fielding the awesome and timely thunderstorm that was following us, silently cursing, AND entertaining the kids. (Please note that by “entertaining” I mean “interceding” because my two precious angels were wielding tin flutes around like light sabers and weren’t afraid to use them.)

Finally, we arrived at the house. In time to put the children directly to bed. And I got to choose between going to cry it out in the shower, and relaxing with a glass of wine from a box. (Don’t judge, people. I take what I can get.)

I chose the wine. And I’m not embarrassed.

Alcohol content: 11.5%

Price: $6.99

Description per label: We all know that being a Mommy is a difficult job. A Mommy’s Time Out is a well-deserved break. This wine is delicate and fruity.

Review:  
Any time a wine implicitly or explicitly encourages the shirking of parental duties my sommelier senses draw me in like a zombie to brains. By now I’m sure you’ve noticed the eerie similarity between the two.  Case in point?  The toddler-toting mom’s gait and the night of the living dead shuffle.  Or how about that thousand mile stare and disheveled appearance of any new parent? When I dragged across this Italian blend, packing my own dual toddlers, I was sold by the name alone. Upon sampling, my expectations of mediocrity were confirmed. The aroma was sweet and fruity and the taste watered down. The finish of this varietal, although lasting, was acidic and lackluster. Always bear in mind that with all gimmicky products at low prices you should never set the bar too high.  This axiom also applies to most celebrity vinted blends. My primary knock is that the alcohol content is an impotent 11.5%.

On the SMS rating scale (1-10) I rate this a mediocre 4.

Suggested pairings: Bunco, Book Clubs, Baby Showers, and Bitching and Moaning.

Ingredients

1 750-ml bottle dry white wine
3/4 cup peach brandy
6 tablespoons frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 16-ounce package frozen unsweetened sliced peaches
3/4 cup seedless green grapes, halved
3/4 cup seedless red grapes, halved

Directions

Stir first 4 ingredients in large pitcher until sugar dissolves. Add peaches and all grapes. Refrigerate sangría until well chilled, about 2 hours. Serve over ice.

Submitted by Annemarie (http://annemarieschiavipedersen.blogspot.com/)

Between my puppy Vito and the blog, I don’t get out much, let alone spot big-time celebrities. So I was excited to find Detroit Red Wings Head Coach Mike Babcock at Christina’s lacrosse game. No, Babcock wasn’t switching from professional hockey to girl’s prep lacrosse; like me, he was there to watch his daughter. Fortuitously, I had my new video camera.

Bloggers sneak photos of celebs all the time. The hope is that the celeb will misbehave. If I was lucky, I could record the Olympic-gold hockey coach do something awful, like throw his Starbucks at the 80-year-old referee.

That’s how millionaire celebrity blogger Perez Hilton (who I used to think was Paris Hilton trying to spell her name like a rapper) got his start.

Nonchalantly, I extended the camera outward so it looked like I was recording Christina. But really, I angled it toward Babcock.

It was bright outside, and as I tried to find him in the lens, the crowd erupted. Christina scored. But I missed it because my camera was aimed at Babcock, who I couldn’t see through the glare.

My friend Pat walked up with a quizzical look. No wonder. Unconsciously, I had turned from the field with my camera blatantly aimed at Babcock.

I whispered to Pat that Babcock was behind her. He was on the phone and really wound up – so much so that Pat couldn’t hear me. So I said it louder – exactly when Babcock stopped talking. He looked me dead in the eye.

“Way to be discreet, mom,” my daughter Beth whispered.

Now that he caught me, I had to pretend I didn’t care about him. At the perfect moment, a gorgeous Golden Retriever, the Farrah Fawcett of dogs, appeared.

The lady with the Golden set her chair next to Babcock. He and the lady smiled at each other. She didn’t appear to care who he was, so I guessed the lady was his wife.

Her dog was pure Hollywood, a video blogger’s dream. Only now I didn’t have the nerve to take its picture because it might belong to Babcock.

Babcock left without saying goodbye to the woman with the dog. Now I was pretty sure they weren’t married. So, not only did I not get a video of Babcock, I didn’t get one of the dog either. Also, I missed Christina’s goal.

I verbally flogged myself — I’d never be Perez Hilton.

“Mom …” Beth caught my hand before I threw my camera into the pussy willows … “I’ve got a picture of you and Mike Babcock.”

There we were caught on Beth’s I-Phone.

Apparently the Perez Hilton-gene skips a generation.

Ahhh—remember the days when you could primp and prep for the day on your own schedule? No little fingers snaking under the door, or worse — small children who take it upon themselves to become backyard explorers while you’re in the shower.

With my youngest now at 3-and-a-half, I’m finally beginning to see the light again. But in talking with friends who have “little-littles,” I vividly recall the days when I was forced to use Dora the Explorer to buy me a time for *any* sort of personal hygiene. And Dora was only about 20 minutes long in the versions we watched, so I was on a timer from the get-go. It went something like this:

Ready? Set? Primp!!

0:00 – 1:00 Make sure all the doors and bolted; put Dora on TV. Turn the shower on and throw clothes off your body, letting them land where they may.

1:00 – 4:00 Get in, frantically scrub hair, face and body in the water that still isn’t quite warm yet. Slather on conditioner with one hand, while brushing your teeth with the other. Rinse. No time to repeat.

4:00 Look down at legs and reminisce fondly about the last time you had time to shave.

4:01 – 4:30 Turn off water, realize you hadn’t rinsed off all the soap, and re-rinse in a cold spray.

4:30 – 5:00 Step out and wrap self in only clean towel available—which is damp, since your kids’ used it last night.

5:00 Make a mental note to put more towels in the laundry.

5:01 – 7:00 Towel dry hair and work over-priced hair gel — or straightening mousse or shine enhancer or whatever the salon was pushing the last time you went for a haircut — into hair.

7:00 – 8:00 Run out to living room in towel (leaving wet footprints on the carpet) to make sure child is still in Dora-induced coma.

8:00 Feel guilty for using TV as babysitter and muse over child-rearing experts who would berate me for letting a toddler watch TV.

8:01 – 10:00 Use hair dryer to damp-dry hair. Plug in hair straightener. Appreciate the fact that the drone of the dryer blocks out all other noise and appreciate the ‘silence.’

10:00 – 12:00 Rapid fire cosmetics.

12:00 Longingly wish for Jetsons-style robot makeup applicator.

12:01 – 13:00 Run into closet to find clothes that have no appreciable stains, drool marks and still fit.

13:00 – 15:00 Use now-scorching flat iron to style hair, ignoring steam that comes from flat-ironing hair that is still slightly damp.

15:00 – 17:00 Realize that clothes you thought were clean have ketchup on the pants and spit-up down the back. Go back into closet to try again.

17:00 – 18:00 Begin cleaning up mess made from functioning like a tornado in a bottle.

18:00 – 19:00 Knock down smoke detector in bedroom that has gone off due to excessive smoke from flat-ironing damp hair.

19:00 Make mental note to buy new smoke detector.

19:01 – 19:45 Run to living room and console hysterical child who was scared by the incredibly loud noise of both the detector and your attempts to make it stop.

19:45 Realize that what you gave up in primp time you get back in cuddle time later.

19:46 – 20:00 Snuggle some more and begin the day.

Price: $6-$8

Sweet to Dry Scale: 7*

This week’s wine was overall not bad. My husband described it as very light bodied, so there wasn’t a whole lot of bite to it. Also, it was really not great on the first day it was open. After a day or two of mellowing out, however, it turned out to be much better. If you happen to have a decanter, that would obviously speed that process up! It was sweet without making anyone gag, and it had enough dryness to balance it out. All in all, a decent Malbec for the price, and if you like Malbecs, you will probably like this one. But seriously..wait a while after you open it before you try it!

Bang for your Buck: Not bad. For under $10, this really isn’t terrible!

*The Sweet to Dry Scale tells you just how dry the wine is, based on a number that my husband and I agree on. The higher the number, the dryer the wine. (0=sweet, 10=dry) My husband likes wines that are a 9 or 10. I like wines that are a 5 or 6.

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