A Trip Down South

Last week we took an overnight drive down to Fresno to spend time with my family and to celebrate with my brother as he graduated high school. My brother and I are 10 years apart, which makes me feel so old, well about 10 years older than a high school graduate. :)

Everyone in Fresno met Reesa. I really mean everyone in Fresno!! My family is so huge that Reesa has about 10 great aunts,5 great uncles, a great grandma, and a bagillion first cousins once removed???? There was a lot of Reesa-holding going on :)

Reesa also met her first cousin Olivia.

After Fresno, we headed to Napa!! As we were planning our Fresno days, we thought, "Hey let's go to Napa for the weekend." So we booked it and later realized that it actually landed on our anniversary. Are we already at that point that we forget our anniversary, both of us??!! May was a really busy month for us so we forgave ourselves for being absent-minded and was grateful for God watching out for us because Napa was exactly what we needed.

The first night we walked around downtown and literally had a Thursday night wine/food market fall into our laps. We didn't have to look for wineries, the wineries came to us. Now that is vacay!! We had the best tri-tip in the entire world and some delicious grenache, pinot, and petite syrah to accompany the live band.

Later we took a long stroll in the park across the way and talked about our 4 years of marriage. I asked Patrick, "What have you thought of our 4 years of marriage?" His response, "I think renewing your vows is stupid." huh? This is a little insight into my husband's crazy mind. He was thinking about an episode of Tori & Dean that we had watched the day before and it was an episode where they renewed their vows after 4 years of marriage. We watched an episode at my parents house because my sister said that when she watches it, she thinks of me because Tori and I apparently are similar. So I had to watch to see if that was a bad or good thing. It wasn't bad, Tori is a goofy, trendy, hands on mom. I don't mind being compared to that :) Well Cheers to us after being married for 4 years. We met seven years ago and have been married for four, that's not too shabby in my book. ;)

Anyways, the next day we got up and had coffee & croissants from the local roasting company before our big bike ride. We found a bike rental company 10 miles north where a ton of vineyards are located along the popular highway 29 and silverado trail. Did we take a leisurely ride? It depends if you think a 16-mile loop with a kiddo trailer is leisurely. We loved it!! We rode on the bike trail as BMW's, Limos, and town cars passed us. We had lunch at what we thought was a grocery store and it turned out to be a grocery store with a gourmet deli, fru-fru flavored water, and wine tasting took place. I think Napa has a different definition of what a grocery store is. They did have picnic tables out back, so we could eat our lunch.

We were definitely the only ones on bikes that day along the wine trails and we didn't even wine taste. Talk about true Oregonians just there to be outside and enjoy the sun. We have our own wineries at home and we've been wine tasting several times. Getting good sun and a long relaxing bike ride doesn't come often for us.

Later we headed home and did the overnight drive back to Portland. It was nice to have a break but it's so nice to be home. Reesa missed her bed because as soon as I laid her down she totally crashed. It's not easy to wear her out, but I think California definitely did. In a good way of course :)