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!  

My B-day In Pictures!

I'm falling behind yet again, but I had such an awesome birthday that I want to make sure I write about it.  Aside from the fact that we left Benji with my mom for the night, it was the perfect day.  We missed the little man like crazy, but we also enjoyed some much needed adult time.  I kicked off my b-day weekend with some cupcakes from my co-workers.   As if it isn't hard enough to focus on work on a Friday afternoon,  it got even harder when I had to figure out which cupcake to eat first... YUM.

Since many of our favorite get away locales have a 2 night minimum on the weekends, we decided to go out on a Sunday and take off of work on Monday.  (Bonus: awesome 3-day weekend is followed by a 4 day work week!)  After giving Ben over 1 million kisses, we headed to Lake Geneva!  Believe it or not, our first stop was...the farm!  Andy had never gone horseback riding before, so I figured, why not?

I am not exactly sure why we have so many horse pictures.  Maybe Andy was afraid I was never going to want to do this again so he had to make the most of it.  How is my posture, Anna?

RC and Ranger did not disappoint.  I was a little very concerned that there were no helmets, but thankfully the horses were going mighty slowly...

As if it wasn't odd enough that it was my idea to go to a farm, I should also mention that there was a petting farm there as well.  Despite the fact that I am not a huge animal lover, I must say that we had a fantastic time.

Even though horseback riding is not exactly athletic, in my opinion, we worked up quite an appetite so we were off to find some food.  We found a quaint little spot where we could eat outside and of course enjoy some beverages.  There was an artisan fair of sorts going on along the lake, so we wanderer around there for a bit after lunch.  We did some window shopping before ending up at one of our favorite places.

We love, love, love LG for many reasons, but one of the most obvious reasons is because it is where we got engaged.   We had to go to our favorite wine bar, Pop More Corks, and play scrabble like we did on our engagement weekend.   It was fairly nice out (totally HOT) so I kind of felt like a bum being inside, but when we learned that there was a piano/cello duo playing, it was obvious that we were staying inside.  It was so relaxing that I might have fallen asleep if my brain wasn't working so hard trying to beat Andy at Scrabble.  (He did not even let me win on my birthday.)

This is the only picture I could find from our Scrabble game a few years ago.  Such a young pup!

While I am pretty sure we would have/ could have stayed there until they kicked us out, we decided to continue our day 'o R&R by checking into our room.  Although we love a good B&B, we decided to check out the Grand Geneva this time around.  We knew we were going to like it when we were waiting in line to check in and they were offering complimentary champagne.  Even though champagne nearly came out of my nose when the lady at the desk told Andy to have a "grand"-tastic day, I'll take service with a smile (and a drink) any day.  I will also take a view like this any day.

I almost forgot to mention how super cute Andy was in preparing for our night away.  He did all of the research and planning!  Since we are kind of obsessed with picnics, he went all out on my picnic favs.  He even went in search of a picnic basket but didn't have any luck.  He brought fancy cheeses and crackers, fruit, chips and salsa, a baguette, and I'm sure there are other things that I am forgetting.  These goodies paired with some vino from Pop More Corks?  HEAVENLY!!!

Andy even did his research on nice restaurants in the area, but after our picnic, we weren't really hungry for a big meal.  We decided to continue relaxing (and cocktailing), so we checked out the pool/hot tub for a bit.  We did go in the water, but I must have forgotten to take pictures of that...  I did, however,  manage to snap a shot with Will, Kate, and George when our mirror turned into a TV.   :)

After feeling sufficiently relaxed, we opted to hang out at the bar in the lobby instead of going out.  It was so nice to just chat!

We attempted to sleep in on Monday morning, but I was up with the sun, of course.  We enjoyed our view and peacefulness a little longer before heading home to the outlet mall.  As I told Andy, how often do we get to go to the outlet mall during the week?!  Being the super shopper hubby that he is, he readily obliged. :)  We grabbed a quick lunch before heading home to our babe.  I seriously missed him soooooo much!!!  I had a great 30th year and I'm looking forward to year #31!  A HUGE thank you to my wonderful husband for making my birthday awesome!  I know I've said it before but he is just the BEST.