Blossom Time

It's mid-February!  Time to turn off the heat and break out the short sleeved shirts! ;)  

Enjoy a taste of Spring via this year's crop of almond blossom photos...

 

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...

And!

BEFORE the long weekend in the snow.  BEFORE the wedding...we also had the pleasure of hosting Kyle for an overnight!  California clients once again brought him to the Bay Area, so we spent a great Friday night and Saturday morning with our favorite brother!

Whew!  What a weekend!!

Warm Times in the Snowy Mountains

And if our glorious time at the wedding wasn't enough joy for one weekend, we next headed up to the mountains with just Cindy and her family for 3 days in the snow.  Keep in mind that Greg and Cindy live in Florida.  Two of her kids have never even seen snow.  Her oldest saw it last when she was a baby.  When we drove up to the AMAZING chalet I rented off VRBO, there was much immediate screaming and throwing of little bodies into the snow!  But, this was at dusk, so a dinner of warm soup and the start of a marathon of catching up brought us inside.

A quick word about the beautiful cabin.  We really could have stayed in a shack, as long as it had snow and a place to sit around and talk.  How our expectations were exceeded with the luxury of this home!  Big, comfy beds for all of us (the kids all slept in one room full of bunk beds), a floating fire place that warmed people on either side of it, a huge kitchen with state of the art appliances, 3 full bathrooms, a game room with a closet full of toys and a Wii, and walls made entirely of windows looking out into the picturesque snowy forest.  It was one of the nicest places we've ever stayed!

Oh the joy to wake up our first morning in the cabin and see that a fresh layer of snow was covering everything!

The kids needed to get out in it immediately and could not wait for breakfast.  Or for real clothes to put under their snow pants.  Or for us to unload the sleds we brought in the van... :)

All the snow on the road and trees quickly melted, but we had a good hour of enjoying this winter wonderland.

Another fabulous thing about our cabin was its location in the hills.  We literally walked out our door into a snow ball field and sledding hill.  And when we got cold or tired or hungry, we just popped back into the cabin.  We probably trekked in and out of the snow about 6 times in a day.

A snow girl was built.

And tons of sledding was done!  Our backyard sledding hill was actually some sort of frozen creek with some twists and turns

No run down it was ever straight and without excitement!  Here are our funniest videos of people crashing.  Crashing into other people.  "People" = us adults. :)

While Maya and Ella bonded and spent a lot of time visiting and playing cards by the fire, Cindy's and my youngest, Jeremiah and Delia, formed a fast friendship too.  These two are passionate, dramatic, and fun-loving.  Their antics on the sledding hill especially made us laugh a lot.  For example, the ski goggles Delia insisted on wearing.

We built a snow fort.  Dave got stuck in it.

We also had an epic snow ball fight with the tall banks of snow the plows pushed up on either side of the road serving as the two teams' bunkers.  The whole neighborhood was quiet and we seemed to have it to ourselves, making a cross-the-street snow ball war no big deal.

Cindy and I shared the cooking.  After hours spent running around in the fresh, cold air, the hot breakfasts, lunches and dinners we whipped up tasted incredible.  We'd clear the table, let the kids go play and then spend a couple more hours around the table deeply discussing all parts of life-- adoption, politics, careers, social media, parenting, racial relations, marriage, discipline, faith, our extended families.  And we laughed.

It was just 3 days in the snow, but it was all such a gift.  We left group hugging goodbye and praising God for friendships that stand the test of time and distance...and continue to the next generation.