Grown-Up Vacation

First of all, I know I am super behind on the blogging.  There has been some serious sleep deprivation going on in this house!  Josh (and some times Ben) has been waking up A LOT.  On the night Andy was gone last weekend, I literally slept from 10:30-12:00 midnight and either Josh, Ben, or BOTH of them were up for the rest of the night morning.  It has been exhausting.  We now consider a night with 2 wake-ups to be a good night.  I almost fell asleep getting my haircut last week.  The sleep situation has to improve, right?!  I don't think I'm one of those people that needs a lot of sleep, but after so many nights of little sleep my body starts to revolt!  BUT, despite the lack of ZZZs, I seriously love these boys so much and I'm sure one day I will long for these late night/ early. early morning snuggles.

We have had a ton of fun stuff going on lately!  We have yet to make it to a pumpkin farm (GASP!) but I hope we can find a day that isn't too freezing!  I want to write a fall post soon, but for now, I'm going to write about our little vacation.  Andy and I left the boys for 4 whole nights!  I was so anxious about it, but we all obviously survived.  We went to California to visit my friend/old co-worker and her family.  I was really, really, really sad to leave my baby boys.  It was probably better that we left before they woke up, or Andy probably would have had to drag me away, sobbing.  We flew in to Sacramento on Thursday, rented a car, and drove to out friends' house.

We arrived at their house in Davis around 1:00PM and we wasted no time in seeing the city!  Davis is such a cool place!  It has a college-town feel (thanks to UC-Davis) and it is also one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country.  Her kids were in school, so the 4 of us hopped on bikes and went for a little city tour.   The bike paths are awesome!  We passed a bunch of parks along the way and we ended up at a coffee shop downtown.  The weather was perfection the entire time we were there.  They are in a bit of a drought right now, which isn't ideal, but it made for low-humidity days.  

We enjoyed some wine at a local wine bar before going to dinner.  On a side note, I realized that I only took a fraction of the number of photos I typically take of the boys, so it wasn't as hard selecting which pictures to post, but I also don't have pictures of every single thing we did.  

The next morning, Andy and I headed out to Napa to check out wine country.  We took the scenic route and it was so much fun!  I was getting a little carsick on the winding mountain roads, but we were listening to the Indigo Girls pandora station while taking in some gorgeous views, so I really couldn't complain!  We didn't do a great job of planning in advance, so the hotel room prices were kind of out of control.  (Like $1700/night!)  We ended up finding a super cute place on airbnb.  We had an entire house (like we could have slept 6+ people) to ourselves and it was so cute!  There were even chickens outside in case you wanted to "get your farm life on."

However, when we went out to get some eggs the next morning, the chickens had all gotten loose!  Luckily, Andy was all about getting his farm on and he was able to get them all back in their coop!  And he was able to enjoy some farm fresh eggs!

Neither Andy nor I had ever been to Napa before, so it was a little overwhelming trying to decide where to go!  Luckily, we have several friends who gave us some excellent recommendations.  Our first stop was Domaine Carneros Winery.  We didn't have the greatest service, but we did have good wine!

Our next stop was Artesa Winery.  It was a more modern building, and it was built in to a mountain.  We were surprised that most of the wineries closed at around 5:00, so after this one closed, we headed back to our place.  We were within walking distance of downtown, so we headed out for dinner.  We ended up eating some pizza at the Oxbow Market. 

We continued walking around and saw a cool looking rooftop bar in the distance, so we went to check it out.  I'm a sucker for hanging lights and mountain views.  Plus the company was top-notch. ;)

We went to one more bar as we were waiting for one of Andy's classmates who was in town, but we ended up getting too tired so we headed back.   The next morning, we headed to San Francisco.  It has always been on my list of places that I wanted to see, so since we were so close, we couldn't pass it up! We drove in over the Golden Gate bridge and it was pretty amazing.  I was a HUGE Full House fan back in the day, so it was kind of a dream come true seeing the bridge in real life. 

It was "fleet week" and the Blue Angels were also in town, so we watch the show over the bridge/bay. We ate lunch in Fisherman's Wharf.  It was a little touristy for our liking, but we had to check it out.

My phone was only working intermittently in San Fran, but thankfully I was able to get it to work long enough to Google "Full House" things.  We were able to find Alamo Square, the home of houses seen here:

We found the house that is supposed to be the house that the "Full House" house was modeled after, but it looked totally different so that was a bit anticlimactic.  It's blue now.  Truth be told, all the houses look quite similar, so I was happy just seeing houses that looked like the "Full House" house.  And while I'm on the truths here, I was keeping my eyes opened for the Tanners and company, but no such luck.  ;) 

We spent our last day full day in California back in Davis with Maya and the fam.  We were going to head out to see Lake Tahoe, but that was a 2 hour drive each ways, so we decided to just hang around Davis.  Andy found a bar to watch the Packers game while the girls went shopping in downtown Davis.  Later in the afternoon, we went to Old Sugar Mill, which, as the name suggests, is an old sugar mill that has been turned in to a winery.  There were a bunch of different wineries within the building so we got in a lot of tasting!  Oh to live so close to all that good wine!

We were up before the sun on Monday to catch a 7:00AM flight back home.  I truly missed Josh and Ben so much and it felt like we were gone MUCH longer, but it was also AMAZING to get away!  We made it home safely with 4 bottles of wine and over 4 pounds worth of pumped milk for Josh--hah!  The reunion with the boys was so sweet.  Ben sprinted in to my arms and Josh sprinted via crawling right after him.  A huge, gigantic thank you to my mom, aka the best mom in the world, for watching the boys while we were gone.  She did have some help, but did the bulk of the dirty work herself!  She got to witness the sleep deprivation first hand.  We are so thankful that the boys were so loved and well cared for while we were gone!  

Vacation! Days # 6 & 7 (07/17/2014 & 07/18/2014)

The main reason we were only in NYC until Wednesday is because we weren't sure how well Ben would sleep away from home, but it was really nice to have a 4 day stay-cation as well.  I love, love, LOVED being with Andy and Ben for 8 days straight.  I thought I would potentially be ready for a break, but it was so fun and I loved every minute of it except for when Ben was sleeping perpendicular to me in bed.  I am going to attempt to highlight the main events of the remainder of our fabulous vacation week.  We started our Thursday morning with a leisurely breakfast.  We ate outside, waved to the people and cars passing by, and acted silly.  I could get used to this...

I finally got to go to Ben's story-time/play group at the library.  He loves going and it made my day that I got to go with him.  He ran right in like such a big boy!  There was a special drum presentation, so we watched that as well.  Ben loves music and especially banging on drums.  He got a special "drum" that was perfectly loud for him.  (My mom has a 6 minute video if you're interested in hearing the music.)

I can't remember how we spent the rest of the day, but I'm sure it was doing something fun!  We had to rest up though because we had big plans to go to Ben's first amusement park on Friday.  I am too tired to expound on the details, but I can summarize by saying that it may have been Ben's happiest day…EVER.  I am not a big ride person, but Ben was in heaven.  He was shaking with excitement when it was his turn after he waited patiently in line.  Just look at that face!  My face looked like that, too.  

He actually cried almost every time he had to get off of a ride.  "Again! Again!  Fun!!!  Ride!  Ben drive!"

We started with a ride that Andy could go on too, but he was just fine going by himself as well.  

I still cannot believe he never tried to get out of any of the rides as they were going.  

He liked them all, but I think his favorite ride was probably the boats.  

I lost track of how many times he drove the boats.

I think I had equally as much fun watching him.  I was that obnoxious mom calling out to my kid every time he passed me.  

My one and only ride was the train, which was probably boring to Ben compared to getting to drive his own vehicles.

Too cool for trains. 

Thankfully the train would switch speeds to keep things exciting.  And Mr. Friendly was sure to wave to everyone he saw.  

Surprisingly, the only ride Ben did not want to go on was the pony ride.  "Watch 'em." 

We did break for lunch in between all of the fun, and the rides were an excellent motivator to get him to eat!

I'm pretty sure he is thanking Andy profusely for taking him to the amusement park in the pictures below.  I love you as much as the rides daddy, so that's a lot!!  Someone wants to be just like daddy...

It was a bit of a drive (2+ hours) but it was totally and completely worth it.  Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that each ride was a ticket and the tickets cost…$0.25 a piece.  We initially bought $5.00 worth of tickets and we had at least 8 tickets left at the end of the day!  As if we needed another reason to return!  Ben was getting a little antsy on the way home, so we stopped for happy hour and dinner.  

Dinner = Fries in Ben's world. 

Talk about a great ending to a great day!

Weekend Recap: Vacation Staycation, Part 2 (Not really a staycation because we left for a bit...)

It's already Sunday, again, but I have a few rare minutes of free time while Andy is at the gym and Ben is napping, so I'll see if I can write this quickly!  Hmmm, I really have to think to remember what we did last Saturday.  Wow, my memory stinks!   Ben and I went to music class in the morning and then Andy finished painting our bedroom in the afternoon.  I was a little nervous that the color would be too dark, but it is perfect and relaxing.  I just love it!  Benji and I made a quick trip to the mall and ran some errands while Andy painted, and then we came home to get ready for our big road trip!

Such a good helper picking out holiday scented soap!

Although part of the reason our 4 day road trip turned into a 1 night trip to the Dells was due to poor planning on our part, it really worked out perfectly.  I was a little leery about how Ben would do in a hotel room.  He goes to bed at 7:30 so we didn't want to sit in silence in the dark for the rest of the night, so we opted to rent a cabin.  Since it was a Sunday in the off-season, it was actually quite reasonable.  We ended up with a 3 bedroom + a loft, 2 bathroom cabin.  It was spacious yet cozy!  Since we had enough room to sleep 10 people, we decided to invite some friends to join in the fun.  Luckily, our friend Maggie was able to join us!  (Although we were sad that her hubby was on-call.)  We made it there just in time for Andy to watch some of the Packers game.  However, he was loving the cabin and the scenery (and his awesome wife who found the place) so much that I would venture to say that he would have been just fine without the game.  

We were so happy we opted for the cabin over a hotel room.  There was much more room for Ben to explore AND the kitchen even had a perfect spot for his lobster chair.  He's quite the messy eater so it really helps to keep him contained for meals.  Benji even had his own room with bunk beds.  The fireplace was two sided so that you could see if when you were outside on the deck too.  Such a good idea!

After snacking a bit, we went to check out the water park.  I was expecting Ben to like it a little more than he did, but we still had fun.   I would have posted more pictures of my little shark in action, but unfortunately the majority of them are blurry--boo!  After we swam, we went back to the cabin for some dinner.  Andy made some tasty pumpkin ravioli for dinner!  After the little guy went to bed, it was vino for the girls and pumpkin beer for Andy.  We played an intensely awesome game of cranium for a good 3+ hours before we crashed for the night a few minutes before Ben woke up.

I wish I could say Ben slept like a champ in the pack 'n play, but not only did he end up in our room, he ended up on our bed.  He would not, could not, did not sleep in the pack 'n play.   I did not realize he is a total wiggle worm in the night and multiple times he was completely perpendicular to Andy and me.  I was barely sleeping because I was afraid he was going to climb out of the bed.  I remember being excited reading 6:24 on the clock, because it meant that the night was over.  We had a fairly lazy Monday morning, complete with pumpkin pancake thanks to the super chef Andy, before hitting the outlet mall!  

Although it was a short little getaway, it was 100% awesome (minus the sleep, so more like 99.99%.)  Actually, I suppose I have to subtract some more awesomeness if we count Ben's crashing fall during lunch.  We were almost ready to go, and Ben was standing on the bench of the booth and he somehow fell forward and smashed his little nose into the table.  Lots of tears and a little blood later, he was as good as new.  He slept most of the way home and it was mighty nice to be home again, even though we were barely gone for 24 hours.  We'll obviously try a vacation again, but man, there is no place like home!

Weekend Recap: Staycation Vacation, Part 1

I'm falling behind AGAIN.  I'm in a rather blah mood tonight and I'm crabby that I work so much and don't have much time to blog, so hopefully writing this post will make me :).  I actually have a lot to be :) about because I had a wonderful 4 day weekend with my little family!  I am probably forgetting something, but I don't believe that I have had 4 consecutive days off since my maternity leave!  Waaay too long!  I seriously loved every work-free minute.  I don't know if I would be the best full-time stay at home mom, but I would certainly love to work even a little bit less.  We had big plans to go on a 4 day road trip, but after realizing that we weren't sure how Ben would do in a hotel room, we opted to only spend 1 night away.  (Hindsight: BRILLIANT move on our part.)  It was rainy on Friday, so we decided to take a trip to the children's museum.  We had never been there before and it was awesome!  I think Ben could have stayed and played all night.  

 

Ben jumped right in there with each and every thing that caught his little eye.  He is getting quite good at repeating what he sees.  He loved throwing the fake fruit down the chute!

He also loved checking out the "home town" exhibits.   Ben was quite the tour guide and made sure that we did not miss an attraction.  He was an excellent bus driver and was a pro at opening and shutting the (invisible) door--probably because we sing "Wheels On The Bus" about 10 times a day.

He had to stop at the ATM before we got too far.  Unfortunately, it was only dispensing plastic cash that day.  Good thing he found us a little free library nearby, although he preferred opening and closing the cabinet doors over the actual books.  

We made a quick stop at the fake grocery store so Benji could pick up one of his favorites--watermelon!  He was seriously trying to eat it, much to my germaphobic chagrin.  

And since I'm a total thrill seeker who loves to live life on the edge (not), we ended our trip with a ride on a Harley (without helmets) and broadcasting the news at a crime scene.  Hopefully this is the closest that Ben will ever get to both of these things. :)

These pictures do not even come close to demonstrating the amount of energy that was expended that day, and thus, no sooner did we get home did I find the boys like this:

I'm feeling as tired as these guys right now, so I'm going to make this a 2 part post.  I've been working out in the morning lately, which I had been missing terribly, but this also requires an earlier bedtime.  Hopefully I'll have time to finish writing before it's the weekend again!  Super pumped that tomorrow is already Thursday!