Build it up, tear it down

My mom was just our here for a week. We of course went wine tasting (post to follow) and went to see Mike's new squadron, but we also drove down to Santa Barbara. My mom has a brother who lives there and since it's only about 4 hours from my house we decided to go visit for a night. 

Their youngest son is 4 or 5, I'm not quite sure anyway he wanted to build block castles so that he could knock them down, correction: he wanted ME to build block castles so HE could knock them down. Here are my beautiful masterpieces pre-demolition:

My uncle Doug is an amazing cook! Every time I go down there I get to try something new and different and it is always amazing. Well this time he made paella for dinner! And it was so good!! I need to get myself one of these pans and a copy of that recipe so I can make it at home sometime!!

On the way back home mom and I stopped in a little town of Los Olivos for some lunch and meandering. Cute little town! Look at how huge these pumpkins are!!

This is the little patio where we had lunch. I love the trunks of this tree (or maybe vine), it looks so cool. I believe the name of the place was Los Olivos Cafe, and it was really good! Mom had a turkey club with avocado, and I had BBQ chicken pizza. 

I just loved the saying on this sign: 

"Wine improves with age, I improve with wine" So true!

After Los Olivos we pulled off in another little town called Los Alamos to check out a restaurant Doug had told us about that cooked everything over a wood fired oven/grill. We didn't stop to eat there (since we had just had lunch) We ended up finding this:

An antique depot mall & PUB, that's right the sign says and pub. Naturally we were interested so we had to check it out. Like most antique malls it was filled with a bunch of old stuff. It's amazing that all this stuff came from people's house. And it's also amazing what stuff some people have! Anyways, what we were really interested in was the "pub"...

Yep, there was a bar with a billiards table and dart board. They poured wines by the glass and also had some beers on tap. Weird!! But it was indeed an antique mall & pub.