MichaelandChrissy.com

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family!  Let us know your New Year’s resolutions so that we can make fun of you for skipping out on them in a month!  I’ve resolved to lose that last ten pounds and to resume learning Japanese, so wish me luck.  Chrissy has resolved not to resolve anymore.

I stopped going out on New Year’s Eve years ago, once I figured out that I didn’t like the bar scene.  Chrissy is the same way, so we’ve spent several of the last ten or so years sleeping through the countdown (only to be woken up by small arms fire just after midnight).  Sure signs of getting old…

We decided to stay up for the New Year tonight though.  Felice is going to hang out with us.  I finally got my Sony Blu-Ray player set up and working with the surround sound so that we can watch movies while we wait.  We’ve got “The Happening“, which I’ve wanted to see for a while, and “Eagle Eye” in HD.

We’ve got a few bottles of wine, including a bottle of Inniskillin Ice Wine (2006) to uncork at midnight, and a chocolate cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  Chrissy also made several dozen of her chocolate-chip cookies (so much for losing that ten pounds).  It should be a fun night!

Today is our wedding anniversary, and Chrissy and I have been married for four years! We had mutually decided to not do anything for our anniversary, since we now concentrate our resources on raising Aiden properly instead.  I take that to mean “don’t go nuts” as opposed to “don’t do anything”.  We often mark significant occasions with gifts or outings, and Chrissy likes to be surprised (which is hard to do, since I have a hard time keeping a secret).

To celebrate our anniversary modestly, I bought two bottles of Inniskillin Vidal Icewine (2006) from “winebuyer.com“. We first tried “ice wine” during our trip to Niagara Falls, one of our first vacations together. There is a small village there called “Niagara On The Lake” with plenty of wine shops. We stopped for a couple of wine tastings at one of their festivals, and ended up bringing several bottles of Inniskillin home.  We’ve even given a bottle away as a wedding present (it’s that good).

Ice wine is interesting because it is harvested from frozen Vidal grapes.  It gets cold enough in Canada that the grapes will freeze on the vine in the first frost of the year.  They only sell it in skinny 375 ml bottles because the batches are so small.  The wine that is made from frozen grapes is different from anything that you’ve ever tasted.  It’s sweet and syrupy, like a desert wine, but it’s also rich with a little acidic.  The last one we tried, the 2004, had undertones of apple and pear.

We might not be able to enjoy our wine for a couple of weeks, though, since Chrissy is very pregnant.  Maybe just a sip?  She already has plans to restock our nine-months-depleted wine rack as soon as Gavin is born.  We really like Reislings, and usually have a selection of sweet white wines in the kitchen.  In the meantime, congratulate us on four great years!