Their Favorite Uncle

    Elk Grove is nice place to live but I wouldn't want to visit here.  What I mean by that is this: nice communities, parks, scenery, people, and even a few dog-friendly parks. If it had a nick-name it would be called Franchise City. Burger King, McDonalds, Taco Bell and Starbucks, Chili's and Outback are the common sites in this town. The lack of places to go for a family visiting is limited. We actually have a winery in the city limits to take adults to, but when nieces visit from out of town we are limited.  After touring our nieces through the beautiful Nugget grocery store with metal sculptures and huge murals we ended up at the best yogurt shop in town called Tops Yogurt. I know it's the best because they have more than a hundred toppings for their huge selection of frozen yogurts. Fourteen is the minimum number of frozen yogurts available plus each of their 4 stores has a hand painted mural done by yours truly, me! The owner, Ray, prides himself in having the most productive yogurt shop in all of Northern California. I like to think that it's my murals that draw them in, but in reality it's the choices the customer has. The murals are a city-like-scapes of cartoon people centered around the Tops Yogurt shops and the areas around town that are identifiable to the community. My nieces say that Tops is better than any yogurt shop they know of in the East Bay Area.

   After a bustling day of walking Presley at the park, coffee at Starbucks, a trip to Nugget and maybe a yarn shop for the girls yarn projects, and finally a tour of Tops Yogurt to get a frozen one and a chat we end up at home. The big event at Uncle Vince's house will be making pizza.  They are going to get one of Uncle Vince's home made pizzas.  I always have a couple of dough balls in the fridge so when the time is right we can pull one out to warm up and start chopping up some veggies, turn on the oven & all while they unravel the mistakes in Aunt Sheri's knitting projects.

    Some day when they are older they will be telling their kids what a great aunt and uncle they had. They will say, "They used to take us all over Elk Grove trying to show us a good time. They took us to grocery stores and dog parks but the best part was we always ended up back at the house where Uncle Vince made us the best pizza we ever had."
    Maybe Elk Grove isn't the most exciting place to visit but we like living here and the nieces keep coming back every summer. By the obvious thumbs up I would have to say it's either the pizza or maybe it's their favorite uncle.