Long Weekend Adventures

Our school has always given us a four day weekend for Presidents' Day.  And we love them for it!  In the past, we've used this time for mini vacations to places like Monterey or Mendocino.  This year, however, we used that mini-vacation time and money in January with our friends in the snow.   So, we found some other clever ways to make this long weekend feel special with lots family time and even a few day trips.

I made a list for the girls that included awesome options of places to go for the day, like the Sacramento Train Museum, the beach, and Yosemite.  Their choice?  The Jelly Belly Factory!  I guess we shouldn't be surprised. We were happy to discover that the free factory tour we've taken a dozen times has been changed to a self-guided tour.  So, instead of being bunched up in a huge group, feeling like we could recite the lines with the videos, we could go through at our own pace and spend long periods of time watching the things we found interesting-- like the workers laying out all the different flavors of jelly beans on the conveyor belt making mix bags, or the chefs mixing up the very pungent lemon and sour apple sauces that coat the beans in the vats.  No pictures during the tour, so here are a few in the art gallery and gift shop.  Delia was delighted to discover some new jelly bean artwork featuring a giant panda and a huge Star Wars display.

Since the girls got their candy tour, we did a little compromising and spent the afternoon in Napa.  We've never tried to do a winery tour or tasting with the girls along, but thought we'd go for it on this trip.  We chose Sterling Vineyards, which was actually very family friendly.  To start, the winery is perched on top of huge hill, so to get to it, a ride in their gondola is required!

The girls were also given gift boxes with snacks, activities and juice.  These gondola boxes have been played with non-stop for the past 4 days, hauling stuffed animals up the shoe-string laced gondola tracks the girls have built around their bedroom!

Sterling also offers a self-guided tour, with their 4 tastings along the way.  No part of it was too boring for the kids.  And the views at the top and end of the tour are unsurpassed.  We even scored a bonus 5th taste while strolling around their Ansel Adams gallery.  A worker said, "You need some wine while enjoying the art!"

Just being in Napa during Spring was a treat!  The whole place was bursting with the colors of wild flowers in bloom.

On Saturday, we continued the family-fun with another little outing to Knight's Ferry.  The girls love, love, love climbing all the rocks here, so our hiking adventures are exciting and tackled without complaint! :)  Ella even brought her sketch pad and sat for a while drawing the covered bridge.

Here is was nice to see the water level looking somewhat normal and the wild poppies starting to dot the green hills with pops of orange.

At last year's Guatemala Mission Trip dinner, we won a gift basket to this fantastic ice cream shop in Knight's Ferry.  We finally used it on Saturday to reward our long, happy hike with the splurge of giant scoops in the fancy cones.

Besides these two outings, this weekend we also...
-played lots of board games
-rode bikes
-watched movies
-read an entire book in one late night! (This was me and it is my crazy favorite thing to do-- stay up way too late finishing a good book, knowing an early morning will not kick my butt the next day.)
-sat with and got to know an interesting new couple at a church dinner
-went to a birthday party for a 90 year old friend
-completed a big landscaping project in the yard, which included a fun stroll around the nursery to pick out new plants

It was a GREAT weekend.
If only they could all be 4 days long. Sigh...