California, Here We Come

Chad and I were so forunate to be able to go to California to celebrate our 8 year anniversary. Nonna and Papa came to Raleigh to watch Kate and Brower for two days and then they spent the rest of the time with Grandma and Grandpa. We are so blessed to have family who loves our kids and who love to watch our kids. We know that we would never be able to take such great trips if we didn't have our parents to take such good care of our kids. Kate and Brower miss us, but I think they really enjoy eating chicken nuggets and mac and cheese for every meal and getting spoiled for 5 days!
We flew into San Francisco and spent a few hours getting our luggage. Our flight was changed that morning without us knowing so we thought we were going to miss our flight. We made the flight after running through the airport but our luggage did not. So, after getting to SF, we grabbed some lunch near the new baseball stadium and then went back to the airport to get our luggage. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and went to the many beautiful viewing areas of SF and the Golden Gate Bridge. It was freezing! I had on a lot of layers and was still cold. After doing that for a few hours, we headed to Santa Rosa for dinner and then to our hotel. We had an early night...we never seemed to adjust to the time change.
On Friday morning, we were up and ready to go running at 6 AM, yep, 6 AM. I am never even moving at 6! We hopped in the car and explored Sonoma and Napa all day. We went to a bunch of wineries and had a picnic at Ravenwood. Some of our favorites were Ravenwood, V. Sattui and Kenwood. It was such a relaxing day. We went back to Santa Rosa for dinner and were in bed at 7:45!
On Saturday, we decided to head back to SF. We got up early and went to Muir Woods. We hiked around Muir Woods for about 3 hours. We went on one of the extended hikes and had the entire hike to ourselves. It was so beautiful! We hiked to a picnic area and ate lunch and hiked back throught the Redwood Forest. After our hike we headed into SF. We walked around Fisherman's Wharf and ate a sourdough bowl of chowder. We spent most of the people watching- lots of interesting people to watch! Then we headed over to one of our favorite's-Ghiradelli and ate a huge sundae. We were exhausted after our hike and all of our eating so we went back to Santa Rosa for the evening to hang out.
On Sunday, we went to a festival that they hold in Carneros called April in Carneros. We each bought a glass and went to about 15 wineries that are only open to the public during the festival. It was so much fun. I think this was one of our favorite things to do. A lot of the wineries were just small, family owned wineries. They all had food that complemened the wine. We ate a lot of food and drank even more wine!! What a fun last day in wine country!
We had such a wonderful time celebrating us just having time together.