Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts

Monday, June 6, 2011

Water, Bubbles & Dock Dancing

We had such a fun weekend!  The weather was beautiful - it was super hot and humid in the cities, but the weather at the cabin was perfect (it seems to always be about 10 degrees cooler there than in the city). We drove up on Friday, ate dinner and then put The Girl to bed.  Then we relaxed with our Kindles (hubby relaxed by fishing off the dock, but he did have his Kindle in one hand!), and a drink.  It was awesome!

The next day, my parents came up, which made Eliza very happy - Mama and Dada are just not as fun as they are, apparently :)  She was asleep when they arrived, but when she woke up she was very happy to see them.  

We had a great day.  We hung out on our new dock (where Eliza thought it was pretty fun to freak her parents and grandparents out by dancing on the dock like a wild child), walked in the lake (still too cold to swim for this mama), and we also checked out a few garage sales in town.  They were all pretty lame, unfortunately, but we did stop by a little petting zoo while we were in town - there was a little festival going on and we just caught the tail end of it.  Of course I forgot my camera :(  There were baby goats there.  They were SO cute!  Aren't all baby animals cute?  They kill me with their adorable-ness.  Anyway, Eliza loved the animals, so it was worth the garage sale strikeouts.  

That night we grilled and had fajitas for dinner, followed by a fantastic rhubarb tart made by my mama.  My dad completed the awesomeness by picking up some DQ soft serve.  YUMMMMM.




The next morning we decided to check out a new playground after breakfast.  We have our 'usual' playground in town that we always go to, but it was fun to check out a new one.  It's at the boat launch on the adjoining lake, only about a 5 minute drive from our cabin.  Eliza gave it her stamp of approval by going down the twirly slide about two dozen times.  While we were there hubby found a baby painted turtle in the sand - it was so tiny and SO cute (what did I say about baby animals??).  My mom moved it to the woods so it wouldn't get stepped on.  Then we went to get coffee before we headed home.



Eliza took an EPIC three-hour nap when we got home, and I joined her for about two of those hours, which was so nice.  This is one of my favorite things about the cabin - napping in the middle of the day is perfectly acceptable :)

After nap, Eliza and Grandpa played with some bubbles on the dock.  Grandpa would blow bubbles and help Eliza catch them on her hand - she thought this was great fun.  She did this for quite a while!


Then we did some more walking in the water with Grandma.  Eliza is becoming a pro at this!  Hopefully soon the water will be warm enough to go swimming (warm enough for mama, that is!).


The day at the cabin ended with my mom making the most out-of-this-world, mind blowing pizza EVER.  Words cannot describe how awesome it was.  We were singing her praises the rest of the night (and today).  It. was. so. good.  Then we headed home while my parents stayed for one more night.  

It was a lovely, fun, relaxing weekend for all, but most of all, Eliza had a blast.  She loves it up there, and I am so glad.  She is the fifth generation to enjoy our family's lake cabin and it is such a wonderful sight to see.  I love watching her with my parents, it reminds me of when I was little, when I spent time there with my grandparents.  I have so many happy memories from that time, and I hope that Eliza makes wonderful memories there with her grandparents, too.  


I am one lucky mama.  In so, so, so many ways.  

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

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