Thursday, March 24, 2011

We're Back.

We are back from our trip and we had a great time!

A lot has happened this March and I haven't blogged about much of it, so I'm going to try to blog about our trip... we'll see how long this takes me..

We went to San Francisco to visit my BFF, Ashley, and her new husband, Jeff, and also drove up to Sonoma (wine country) for two days to do some wine tasting.

When we arrived we picked up our rental car and headed straight to Ashley and Jeff's apartment (and snagged a primo parking spot right in front of their house!).  Their apartment looked beautiful, and Ashley had made us the most amazing spread of food - fresh fruit, veggie "pizza" apps, rice krispie bars, lovely homemade tomato soup and nummy gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.  She went all out, and it was soooo yummy.  That day we headed out for a walk up to the top of the hill they live on.  Wow, the hills there are crazy!  Later, we put the baby girl to bed - she was sooo tired from traveling and the 2 hour time change, but she did really great overall - and then we had dinner.  Ashley is a great cook, and we really got to experience her finest.  She made pot pie that was to die for!

The next day, before we headed up to Sonoma, we met a friend from college and her two little ones at Crissy Field Beach, which is right beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  Talk about a view!  It was a beautiful day out, the sun was shining, but it wasn't too hot.  Eliza LOVED the beach; she played in the sand with our friend's kids and had a complete blast.

After that, we drove north about 45 minutes to Sonoma and checked into our hotel.  We spent the next day touring wineries in the area - we made it to four that day and two more the following day.  Eliza did great in the tasting rooms (we were a bit worried!), and got a lot of attention from people.  She actually had a ball, I think, walking around and flirting with people.  It was cute.  We would switch off tasting wine and watching her (there were some breakable things around so obviously we didn't let her run completely free), it worked out great.  We ended up buying eight bottles and taking home six of them - we shared one with our wonderful hosts when we got back to SF, and gave one to them as a thank you gift (though we owe them much more than that!).

Sonoma is a cute little town, and although it rained much of the time we were there, we managed to explore the area and have some great food, too.  It was a fun little adventure for the three of us.

We spent the last few days of our trip back in SF with Ashley and Jeff.  We explored the city (thanks to our wonderful tour guides) - we saw Alamo Square (think Full House houses), Ocean Beach (oh wait, I guess we did these two things before Sonoma... ack!  I'm getting things all mixed up.  Oh well :), Fisherman's Wharf (where we ate crab and clam chowder, yummmm)... and we rode a streetcar, which Eliza LOVED.  She kept signing "bus" (close enough, I guess!) and "again" every time it stopped.  Also, we had girl/girl and boy/boy dates!  Heheh.  Ashley took me to a fantastic restaurant called Range, and we had a great time.  It was such a fun dinner - we chatted and shared great food and the time passed way too quickly!  I finally got a text from Andy saying that Eliza had woken up so we headed back to their apartment.  I put Eliza back to bed and then the boys went out for their date.

On Monday morning the three of us snuck out when Eliza woke up (so, like, 6:30) and headed to Muir Woods, which is about an hour drive from A&J's apartment.  We walked there for about an hour and saw the towering Redwoods and giant banana slugs that Muir Woods is famous for.  It was amazing.  Well, Eliza didn't really think so, but Andy and I did :)  We grabbed a cup of coffee before we got back in the car and drove back to SF.  We had to get back and pack up our stuff to get to the airport.  I was sad, I didn't want our trip to end!

It was definitely different traveling with an active 16-month-old, but it was well worth it.  She is a great traveler, really.  We are lucky.  It was stressful at times, but of course that is to be expected.  Most of all, it was just really really fun to have her with us and to introduce her to new things like the beach and a big busy city (and wineries, too ;).

Alamo Square

Ocean Beach

Crissy Field Beach

Winery Fun!

Eliza meets the crabs.

Asking for more clam chowder.

Vista Point

Muir Woods

5 comments:

Sarah said...

Sounds like an amazing trip! :) Glad you guys are back though!

Abby said...

Sounds like a great trip...glad you had so much fun! And ha! your reference to Full House houses cracked me up. ;-)

Stephanie said...

Sounds like an amazing trip! I love sf but have never been to sonoma. Great pictures!

Dawn said...

Welcome Back! Looks/sounds like you all had a great time! Love the pictures.

Anonymous said...

Aw, good recap! Did Jeff send you his photos of Miss E? He got some cute ones.

Eliza's Stats

Birth: 8 lbs 5 ozs
Going home: 7 lbs 10 ozs
5 days: 7 lbs 13 ozs
2 months: 12 lbs 6 ozs
4 months: 17 lbs
5 months: 18 lbs 12 ozs
6 months: 20 lbs 13 ozs
9 months: 24 lbs 3 ozs
12 months: 26 lbs 13 ozs
15 months: 28 lbs
18 months: 29 lbs 3 ozs
2 years: 32 lbs
3 years: 34 lbs

Alice's Stats

Birth: 8 lbs 11 oz
2 Months: 13 lbs 10 oz
4 Months: 17 lbs 15 oz
6 Months: 20 lbs 4 oz