Day three - Napa

Hi girls! How are you? By the time you read this it will be Tuesday - Daddy's birthday! I hope you can remember to send him an email to wish him a Happy Birthday. I think he'd like that!

Today we enjoyed a super yummy breakfast here at our hotel (I will take pictures tomorrow to show you, promise) and then we were picked up by a little tour bus for our wine tasting tour. There were 9 other people on the bus - a couple from Toronto, another from Montreal, a single lady from Seattle, a couple from Denver and the last couple was from Southern California - Ventura County. We were taken to 4 different wineries.

This was our bus driver/tour guide - Stanley - giving us a little talk at our first winery, Peju.

This is what the grapes look like right now. Teeny tiny baby grapes!!

Here's Daddy tasting wine at Peju.

Here I am in the beautiful gardens of Peju Winery.

This was at our second winery, Casa Nuestra. The man in the checked shirt is using a special tool (a pipette for wine - see below) to take some wine right out of a barrel to allow us to taste it.

Here he is pouring it into Daddy's wine glass. The reason he was taking it right from the barrel and not from a bottle was because the winery had only been able to acquire 2 barrels (not really very much wine for selling) and it still needs to age a bit more in the barrels. They will put what's left into bottles towards the end of the summer.

Here are some of the barrels of wine that Casa Nuestra had in their cellar.

The machine behind Daddy is an old wine press. Once the grapes are picked they are put in this and then squeezed to get the juice out to make the wine. Now it's just a sign though!

This winery was a little special because they had a couple goats. Daddy fed one some alfalfa cubes. The owners of the winery tried to use the goats to keep the weeds at bay but they developed a taste for the grapes and the grape vines so now they just get to hang out in their pen and get fed by tourists like us!

We got served lunch here so it seemed only fair to give the goats a snack too!

 After lunch we got back on the bus and headed to a 3rd winery, Arger-Martucci. We sat out on the patio and tasted some of their wine in their beautiful garden.

Our last stop was the most fun. This is the tasting room at Hopper Creek.

And here is our group!

A picture of me.

And Daddy and me.

Well, it's now Tuesday morning and I hope I've managed to get this finished before you guys went looking for it. I was having trouble uploading the pictures last night so gave up at about 11:30. Daddy had already fallen asleep!!

Have a good day girls. I love you!

Day two - San Fransisco and Napa

Hi Marley, Paige and LC.
Thank you for your emails. I really missed you today! It was my first Mother's Day without my girls and I think I may not want to do this again anytime soon. Daddy and I are having a lot of fun but I wished I could give you all hugs today!

Anyway, on to our day ...

After getting to sleep in and after breakfast at Starbucks (so I could write yesterday's blog post) we checked out of our hotel and then walked over to Union Square. It's the main shopping district in San Fransisco. In my bag is something for Grandma (shhh ... don't tell her!!) But there is also a Square (a meeting area/open space) and at each corner is a sculpture of a heart. I thought that since it was Mother's Day a picture of me in front of the heart was appropriate. I love you guys!!

Here's Daddy in the Square.

I don't think I took any pictures yet of palm trees so here's one. There are tons of them around here.

After looking at all the stores but only shopping in a few (Daddy picked out a pair of sunglasses that are for his birthday from you girls!), we made our way over to Chinatown. This is a picture of the gates at the entrance. 

Here is a picture of the main street through Chinatown. Do you like all the lanterns and banners? It was very festive!

Chinatown is also known for its cool looking buildings.

Here's Daddy in front of another one.

Then we found some lunch. We checked out a different restaurant but since the line up was so long we had time to check out this Dim Sum restaurant and got seated right away. Grandma and Grandpa will appreciate that we STUFFED ourselves for only $32!! It was an authentic Chinatown experience and the food was yummy! Our favourite thing was the shrimp dumplings!!!

After lunch we headed back to the car and drove to Napa.

Here is our hotel room.

And Daddy joking around with the wine glasses that were in the room.

Silly Daddy!

You guys would love this hotel! At 6:00PM they serve freshly baked cookies (tonight it was chocolate chip pecan) with ice cold milk. Soooooo yummy!!

Okay girls, that's all for tonight. Have a good day at school/preschool/ballet!

Good night! XOXOXO

Day One - San Fransisco

Hi girls!

Sorry this post wasn't ready for you when you woke up this morning. Daddy and I got back to the hotel at around 11:00 last night and we were so tired we just went to sleep. Now we are sitting in the Starbucks across  the street from our hotel having breakfast and using their free internet! Yay free WiFi!!

Here is a quick recap of our trip so far ...

Daddy at the airport. We were delayed slightly due to fog in San Fransisco.

Our airplane.

Our hotel room.

Once we'd checked in to the hotel we headed out in search of some lunch. We are really close to the water so we headed down to the Ferry Building which is on the Embarcadero - the street that runs alongside the docks. There was a farmer's market going on and we found a food stand that was selling 1/4 rotisserie chicken with potatoes.

Our lunch.

Daddy thought it was yummy!

There I am!! :) That bridge is the Bay Bridge.

After lunch we got on the tram (a very nice couple gave us their transit passes!) and took it to the end where we could walk to Fisherman's Wharf. This is an area of the town with TONS of seafood restaurants and touristy type shops. Lot's of fun things to look at and buy (hint, hint, hint!)

Can you see the sign on top of hte building behind Daddy? It says Ghirardelli. They are makers of fine chocolate (and mustard but who really cares about that, eh?) We headed over to Ghirardelli square and I indulged in an icecream. Yum!

Then we hopped on this Cable Car to take up us a seriously steep hill to see Lombard Street. This is the "crookedest" street in the world!

Here I am at the top of it looking out over the city.

And there's the street. Pretty crooked, eh?

We made our way back to the waterfront and a place called Pier 39 which was full of fun shops, restaurants and arcades (ask Grandpa what those are!) There is also a population of sea lions living there! I took a little video which will hopefully upload by the time I finish this post and I'll put the link here.

Then it was time to catch our ferry tour over to Alcatraz!! Alcatraz was used a maximum security prison about 80 years ago. It's in an island in the middle of San Fransisco Bay so it's pretty hard for the prisoners to escape!

We got several different views of the Golden Gate Bridge over the course of today but this is how it looked last night from the boat. Not too golden and partly hidden in low cloud. Pretty typical. Maybe I'll get a better shot today or on Tuesday when we are going to be driving over it!

Do you see the white rocks? Do you see the little black specks on the white rocks? Those are sea birds called cormorants (with a healthy dose of sea gulls too) and they are the readon the rocks are white. Years and years of bird poop!!! Eww!!

Welcome to Alcatraz!!

This is what one of the cells looked like. Should we redecrate your rooms like this?

I tried to get Daddy locked up! Just kidding!

This is what one of the rows of cells looked like. They called this row "Broadway".

Taken from Alcatraz, this is a view of San Fransisco. It looks pretty grey here because the evening was grey (and cold!) but it is a beautiful city. I know you girls would love it!

Okay, that's it! Today we are going to explore Union Square and Chinatown before driving to Napa Valley. I got Grandpa's email and it sounds like you had a fun day yesterday with your cousins. Glad you are being good for Grandma and Grandpa!!

Have fun today! You should be back from swimming now so I hope that went well.

We love you and miss you!

5 on Friday - May 6th

This is going to have to be another quick post. Greg and I are leaving tomorrow (at the crack of dawn! Yuck!) for a week away ... wait for it ... BY OURSELVES!

No kids?! What is that like? What will we talk about? What will we argue about? What will we worry about?

And when someone asks "what's for lunch?" I won't be expected to prepare it!!!

The past couple weeks have been stressful ones for me - especially this week - as I try to plan for all contingencies. Make sure all clothes are washed and put away. Make sure the house is clean-ish (with 3 little kids that's pretty much all I can strive for!) Make sure there's milk in the fridge and gas in the van. Make sure I shower them with a weeks worth of love before I leave. Hmmm ... probably failed on that last one. Stressful Mommy is not so nice!

One of the ways I had to take a few minutes for myself and de-stress was to scrap. I ambitiously signed up for Lain Ehman's LOAD Challenge (LOAD stands for LayOut A Day). I managed to keep up this week but today`s layout will have to happen when I get back. My 5 this week are my 5 layouts.

Here they are ...

Day 1. Create a layout using only the basics - cardstock, patterned paper, photos, title and journalling.

I used my Cricut to cut out the circles in different sizes and also the brackets around the word "aah". I inked them all to help them stand out but other than that I stuck pretty close to the prompt. And I love the results! So simple, yet I find it allows my eyes to rest and enjoy the pictures. And it`s got to be all about the pictures, right? It wasn't easy keeping it so simple though. I really wanted to dip into my buttons, flowers and ribbon stash!!

Day 2 - Create a layout using contrast but not colour contrast.

Another toughie for me but once again I am happy with the results. In case it's not obvious (and it may not be but I'm okay with that!) my contrast is with the size of the photos. I tried to make the top photo of the 4 of us stand out by making it larger than the other two and not only framing it but popping it off the page with pop dots. The title is a secondary element so I kept it as close to the colour of the cardstock as I could.

Day 3 - Emphasis - Pick one element to be the star.

Can you guess what my star element is? That awesome title!! I had purchased these stickers ages ago planning to use them in just such a layout. So glad to finally use them!

Day 4 - Embrace the whitespace!

Okay, I just love how this layout turned out. The photos are a tiny bit blurry and even though I've loved them since first seeing them, I've always thought they weren't "perfect" enough for a scrapbook page. After my sojourn into embracing imperfection I am not so afraid of those "imperfect" photos. So I decided to scrap them for this prompt knowing they needed a light touch.

Day 5 - The Visual Triangle

I honestly don't know if I was completely successful with this one. I was trying to use the green ribbons and the green grocery bag as one triangle and the yellow title, yellow tag and yellow chick as the other.

Okay, since it is now almost 10:00PM and I still have laundry to fold, a case to finish packing and lists to double and triple check, I am going to sign off. For the next week I will be using my blog as a way to stay in touch with the girls. If you are interested in Greg and my trip to San Fransisco, Napa Valley and our 3-day repositioning cruise from LA to Vancouver, then check in for daily updates. If not, I'll see you next Saturday or Sunday after I've unpacked my suitcase, done some more laundry, and hugged my kids for hours!