Wine Country Trekking

Sean and I decided to plan a trip for just the two of us over spring break. It's been years since we have done so and it'll be great for my kids to spend some time with Grandma Hinners since we don't see her near as much anymore. They are so excited to head to the farm and play with their cousins again :)

The plan was to run a marathon but we struck out doing the Napa Valley Trail Marathon (full by the time we went to sign up) and the Oakland Marathon (landed in the middle of our vacation). It was decided that we thought it'd be just as fun to run whatever trails we could find.

Sean came across a website called Wine Country Trekking. This was PERFECT! They have trail runs mapped out for you each day and they they take care of reserving rooms for you each night depending on where you will be. Once our morning runs are done and we are showered, we will head to wine tastings that are set up for us. And with what time we have left in the afternoon, we can head out to other wineries we want to visit that weren't put on our agenda.

Here's what we received in the mail after making reservations for our Sonoma Valley Runner's Trek!

I am so excited! Running on beautiful trails in the morning, not coming back to a house of yelling kids and relaxing with wine in the afternoon sounds like heaven to me!

We'll have three days of running and the mileage goes up each day from 9 miles to 11 miles to 13 miles. Once again, perfect! We'll get to explore Jack London State Park, Hood Mountain Regional Park (Sugar Loaf Ridge State Park) and Annadel State Park.

If this is something of interest to any of you, Wine Country Trekking has different treks set up depending on if you want to hike or run. And they cater to your needs so if you want to shorten up the route, they can do that for you.

If we have time we may try to head over to Auburn, CA area to check out part of the Western States 100 course. A trail runner that has a blog/podcast that Sean follows volunteered to show us around some of the course. That would be pretty awesome, too. 

Oh, I get more excited the more I talk about it! Only 3 1/2 weeks to go!!!

Sean's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Sean!

The plan was to get Sean a gift card to The Hop Shoppe in town so he could pick out some items to brew or whatever he needed. Then I kept getting hints about him wanting a keg and a CO2 kit so I caved and the little ones and I set off to have Bryan (owner of The Hop Shoppe) help me out.

Bryan was super helpful and helped line up what I needed for Sean to get started. If you like to brew and want to shop local, this is the place to go and I highly recommend you checking it out! They don't have a website, but they do have a Facebook page here.

That evening after Madison's volleyball game we enjoyed chinese food and angel food cake with strawberries. Some of Sean's favorites.

Sean w/the kiddos and his cake. Yes, it's a little 

brown on top, but still tasted good.

So yummy w/strawberries!

Since Valentine's Day was the next day, Sean hit it pretty good. I had already bought things to make his next gift before knowing I was going to go crazy with his birthday gift. This was yet another idea I had gotten off pinterest (specifically from this blog where they are much prettier than what I did). I really need to stop going on there so much, but it's so fun doing new things and feeling like I'm crafty!

I chose a variety of beers from Friar Tuck and then bought cardstock and puffy paint and printed off the sayings to make the beer labels.

decorated variety of beers

placed in valentine's basket

 equals

happy husband!

Happy Birthday/Valentine's Day honey! I love you!

Valentine's Day

We had a fun day for Valentine's Day. I was a little stressed as well, but I'm sure that's because I had gotten way too many ideas from pinterest to execute. Everything still turned out great though!

Normally, I don't do a whole lot for Valentine's Day, but this year I decided to have a little gift bag ready for the kiddos when they got up in the morning.

I basically filled it with a magazine or book, a Strawberry Crush pop, a little bag of candy that I put together and one other small item. So nothing expensive, but just a little something to make them smile in the morning :)

This year we had decided to make homemade valentines that I had found on pinterest. I let the kids pick which ones they wanted to do. The girls did these cute butterflies. . .

And Noah did these glow sticks. . .

Then at the last minute I decided to go ahead and do this cute, yummy popcorn bag idea for the teachers and their helpers.

Popcorn mix drying on baking sheet.

Final product in bags and tied w/valentine ribbon.

Even though we're homeschooling Summer now, I had her pick some friends she made last semester that she wanted to give valentines to. She wanted to be sure her teachers got something too, so we stopped by the preschool at the end of class and delivered these popcorn goodies for them. It was so sweet seeing her give them hugs!

If I wouldn't have had a head cold/allergies hit me up, the day would have been perfect. I bought a heart shaped cake pan, but didn't get time to make the heart cake because I was laying on the couch part of the day :( We'll still get it done this week though. Better late than never, right?