Sister Visit

Sis was here for a few days. On Sunday we were dying of unseasonal heat.
She arrived, bringing all kinds of goodies from Trader Joe's and looking for a little relaxation on the mountain top.
We ate dinner, talked, watched Masterpiece Theater... and she just relaxed on the couch, with a dog on each side of her.
In the morning she fixed me some of her unbelievable oatmeal for breakfast.
This sister of mine can really fixed a dish of oatmeal.

She makes the oats with milk. Then she adds cut up apples and dried cranberries while it's cooking.  She tops it with a small amount of brown sugar and pecans, that she buys at Trader Joe's. They are pecans that are baked with honey and sugar. I'm guessing that you could do this with regular pecans but these are already sweetened and packaged this way. Sis breaks them up on top of the oatmeal and OH!  Is it good. You only need a little milk because the fruit and nuts makes it all moist, sweet and delicious without adding a lot of milk or sugar. She even sprinkled some of the brown sugar on the plate, to make it look beautiful enough to take a picture of (which I did) and similar to what you pay big bucks for in the restaurants. It's called "plate-ing" on the Food Network. It was a truly beautiful serving of oatmeal.
So, we ate in the living room... with the dogs... and then we let them lick the dishes. A bad habit that has been reinforced in this household. They are truly spoiled dogs.

Carl always gets to lick first, and Cutter waits patiently, for his uncle to lick part of the dish. Then Cutter gets to lick the rest.

"Oh boy. It's my turn."

After breakfast they got to cuddle with  their auntie.  Cutter still gets a little overwhelmed with too much closeness, but Sis finally won him over.

And, a few days later, when it was time for her to leave, they were both unhappy about saying goodbye.

"Where are you going Auntie?"

Look at Carl's expression. It was a sad moment.

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While Sis was here we spent a morning down on the river. First we drove to the new river access under the highway 49 bridge.
The drive down to the water was springtime magic.

The whole area from the highway to the river was covered with a daisy like flower that had been planted along the road, with lots of California poppies in between all the beautiful yellow flowers. It was a most beautiful site. 

The river was flowing wide and deep... and clouds were moving in from the west.

It was a perfect spring day in the foothills.

After we tiptoed through the daisies, we drove back toward Jackson ,over the Mokelumne River bridge and north to see the hills of poppies that I posted on  Wordless Wednesday.

It was so beautiful. Nature never fails us here in the foothills.

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On Tuesday we went to Sutter Creek and had lunch.

We went to some of our favorite stores... mostly "just looking", because these are high end stores and things tend to be a bit pricey. But, there is always the possibility of a surprise "bargain". You just never know when something will be on sale that you can't resist.

We introduced the owner of Romancing the Range to the Magnolia Pearl website. She had never seen or heard of this amazing women and her endeavours. The clothes in this store are all "cowboy meets Pearl" kinds of clothing and she went crazy when she saw The website. Check it out. The music is worth the link. It's beautiful. She also has a blog..... My, oh my!  Read a few of the posts on her blog and you'll see why I call her amazing.

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Loved having Sis here. It had been a while since her last visit. It rained most of yesterday but we managed one more lunch downtown before she left for home. 

 Thanks for coming up. We all miss you . Carl and Cutter have been looking for you all day. 

I will see you soon.