Happy Monday.

Another week here in beautiful Napa, and somehow we are already getting pretty close to the 65% ish mark of the year.

Hope you all have been well and got in a little fair action this weekend.

I will say, on my end, the last few weeks have been a little tougher than usual when it comes to keeping up with all of this. Between digging around for stories, doing the research and actually putting the Lowdown together, there is a surprising amount that goes into these little emails.

I still do it for the love of the game, obviously.

But if you have noticed a shorter issue here or there, or something I missed that I normally would have caught, that is probably why. My time has been a little more limited lately, so apologies to those of you who may have noticed :)

Alright, enough about me.

Here’s this week’s trivia:

For every licensed childcare spot in Napa County, approximately how many children under five are there?

A) 1
B) 2.5
C) 4
D) 13

I swear I was just writing about graduation, but here we go again.

Summer goes by way too quickly.

For everyone without kids in Napa schools and may be out of the loop, this is your friendly reminder that NVUSD students head back to class this Wednesday, August 12.

There are a couple of things worth knowing this year.

So maybe give yourself an extra few minutes Wednesday morning before wondering why every car in Napa suddenly seems to be on the road at the same time.

Anyway, good luck to all the parents getting everyone out the door, and to all the kids heading back. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the summer while it lasted.

Link: https://www.nvusd.org/families/back-to-school

I kind of feel like we were just talking about this, but hey in Napa, it feels like every other street has some kind of construction happening on it.

At least this one actually makes a decent amount of sense.

The Pueblo Area Rehabilitation Project is basically three agencies coordinating their work at once. NapaSan is replacing and rehabilitating sewer lines, the City of Napa is doing water work, and Napa County will eventually come through and rehabilitate the streets afterward.

So theoretically, when everything is finished, we should end up with fresh infrastructure underneath and a newly rehabilitated road on top, instead of having one agency finish its work and another come back six months later and tear everything up again.

The downside, obviously, is getting through the construction first.

This week specifically, work is happening on Joyce Court, Nancy Court, Carol Drive between Sandra Drive and Ethel Porter Drive, and Ethel Porter Drive between Sandra Drive and Carol Drive. Water work is also happening on Carol Drive between Sandra Drive and Kathleen Drive.

So if you live in that area, or regularly cut through there heading toward the nearby shopping areas, I would probably give yourself a little extra time.

The construction and traffic impacts are going to be around for a while, but at least there is a pretty logical reason behind all of it.

Project Updates: https://www.napasan.com/278/Pueblo-Area-Rehabilitation-Project---Pha

I remember doing a ton of research on preschools for a close friend here in town.

There are actually a lot of options, but sorting through all of them, comparing ages, schedules, pricing and availability takes a surprising amount of time.

That eventually became this guide: https://guides.napalowdown.com/preschools

And apparently I am going to have to update the Le Petit Elephant section pretty soon.

They are opening their new Chapel Hill Child Development Center on Laurel Street this month, and this is a pretty substantial expansion.

The renovated campus will eventually have 10 classrooms covering infants, toddlers, preschool and TK, along with after-school care, outdoor play areas, an indoor community playroom for kids five and under, weekend programming and expanded infant care.

That last part is especially useful because Napa County officials have previously estimated that there is only about one licensed childcare spot for every four children under five in the county, and infant care is even tighter, at roughly one spot for every nine infants.

So I am not going to pretend to tell parents which preschool they should send their kids to. But purely from a childcare-capacity standpoint, opening a center of this size in Napa is pretty significant.

One useful practical detail: published 2026–27 full-time infant tuition is $2,260 per month, and Le Petit Elephant says sliding-scale tuition assistance is available.

So if you have little ones, or know someone currently hunting for childcare, this is probably worth putting on the radar.

Link: https://www.lpenapa.com/new-campus

I somehow completely missed this, but Oxbow has a pretty interesting newish restaurant concept - it actually opened back in February, so apparently I am about six months late to this one.

It is called Rotation, and instead of building the whole place around one permanent chef, they bring in different chefs for limited residencies, with each one creating their own menu while they are there.

So the restaurant stays the same, but depending on when you go, the food and the person behind it can be completely different.

This month’s featured chef is Robert Sulatycky, whose residency runs through August.

Honestly, I think that is a pretty cool idea. Napa obviously has plenty of restaurants, but this gives visiting chefs a way to basically have their own temporary Napa kitchen without opening an entirely new place.

Anyway, I somehow missed this one when it opened, so adding it to the list and wanted to close out with something fun.

And the answer to this week’s trivia is 4.

Like we mentioned in that segment - Napa County officials have estimated that there is only about one licensed childcare spot for every four children under five in the county.

Before I go, I actually have a question for you all. How am I doing?

We are getting pretty deep into the year now, and I am always testing little things with the Lowdown. The new calendar is one of them, and I have a few other ideas I have been kicking around.

I know you all already send me plenty of things happening around town, which is great, so please keep doing that. But I am also curious what else you would like to see in here.

One idea I have been thinking about is some kind of community highlights section. We used to have a little fun with some of the sillier things people would post on Nextdoor, but I also do not want this to turn into us picking on random people around Napa :)

So maybe there is a better version of that. Anyway, what do you want more of? What should I test? What are we missing?

Hit reply and let me know. I genuinely read all of them. Have a great week, and I will see you Friday.

Callie.