Napa is for Auto parts, buy your wine in Sonoma!

Living in Sonoma CA, we are lucky to live in an area that is filled with grapes, the area is filled with 15 different Appalachians (places where you can grow grapes which are similar to areas in europe) 

Our good friend  took us on a lovely trip starting our day at Iron Horse Vineyards! With Sparkling Wine, Strawberries were provided by our tour guide!

Iron Horse's Sparkling Wine is perfect, we tried the entire sparkling flight. I went home with a bottle of the Russian Cuve. All of the sparkling wine at Iron Horse is brewed from grapes on the property which allows for control over all the grapes

Iron horse!

An Amazing View

Some local art

I couldn't resist snapping a photo of this car

DeLoach Vineyards is a favorite of ours as well, we hit it every wine tour we go on! Susanee packed us some skewers with local turkey pastrami, local sourdough bread, and local cheeses. Hooray for Sonoma!

The DeLoach Family sold this vineyard to a French company, so now the owner has Hook and Ladder Vineyard a few miles down the street.

Here is a picture of Cecil DeLoach's other vineyard the Hook and Ladder Vineyard

Our Next stop was the Hop Kiln Winery, where we encountered the ULTIMATE wino, a middle aged man who was about five feet tall and looked like a frog, he procceeded to  'one up' every comment we made. 

Oh Sonoma!

at this point they all start to taste the same

Finally we stopped at the Matrix Winery, where we had a yummy lunch prepared by our tour guide with a salad, some homemade Sorrentine quiche, and a lemon tart, we enjoyed a bottle of wine with our snack.

Mom, letting us know she's not a huge fan of eggs

Our tour guide, with our yummy lunch!

Annabella enjoying her strawberry!

If you are ever in the area I highly recommend a wine tour, Susanne rented a car and drove us to all the wineries so that we could enjoy our wine and not drive!

I had such a wonderful time with my mom, she even got to spend my birthday with me! She took me to Sur La Table, and got me a Nordic Ware Bundt Pan

 Cannoli Formss so I can FINALLY make cannoli from scratch!

and a Veggie Peeler , because my disappeared somewhere into the abyss

Thanks mom!

Luther Burbank Gardens with Mom

One of my favorite places in the world is the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, in Santa Rosa, California. Luther Burbank was someone who loved plants, he developed over 800 strains and varieties of plants most commonly, the shasta daisy

You may also know Luther as the inventor of the Russet potato! Ever had a white blackberry? If you go to Luther's Wikipedia Page, you can find out more facinating facts, like he never even graduated high school! You can also thank him for this juicy fire poppy

At the Burbank house there is a whole bed of them

This is the biggest Opuntia (prickly pear) plant I've ever seen!

And some pears

I'll never have a veggie garden like Burbank, check out his red chard

And Orange

I feel blessed to live next to Santa Rosa, Burbank wrote to his family "I firmly believe from what I have seen that [Santa Rosa] is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as nature is concerned...." I think that he's right.

The flowers above were in Burbank's children's garden, I read this beautiful quote in front of it 

"Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs and mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, waterlilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education"

I couldn't agree more

The beans below are great for returning nitrogen to the soil, they are good food as well, what you do is plant these in an area in a year after you have planted a crop that drains nitrogen from the soil. After a few years the soil is rich in nitrogen and great to plan in again. Brilliant!

A bed of Shasta Daisy!

Annabella loved all the flowers

Some Blue Fennel! I love how these flowers look

This sundial was so easy to read!

If you are ever in Santa Rosa or Northern California, definitely check this place out, you can even get some of Luther's plants to take home and plant in your garden! 

Or just hang out on the lawn, watch the fountain, and eat a banana

yum

Camping!

This weekend we went on Annabella's first camping trip!

The Ribs I made for the first night were AMAZING, even better then the last ones

I got lots of complements including a few 'best ribs I ever had' 

So I've decided to start making my own BBQ sauce, not that I have any idea how to make it, but I would love to do one of those Food Network Challenges with ribs. I'm pretty sure I could win, if I could only come up with the best sauce.

Back to Camping

We discovered a few of these guys, must be time to molt shells

A few hours later I saw him again, good job buddy!

Annabella loved looking at all the trees and wildlife

We saw lots of butterflies

Camping in the redwoods is such a neat experience, Everything is so big!

This was Annabella's first time trying out her Graco Pack 'n Play Playard  for anything besides sleeping. She didn't seem to mind it too much.

I got my ERGO carrier just in time for the weekend and it was  LIFESAVER. I used the back carry position a lot, it freed up my hands to do whatever, and yes, Ryan used it too! It was so nice to have  a break!

Annabella loved looking at the campfire

Annabella was an angel all weekend, she seemed to really enjoy being with all her friends and family. I can't wait to take our next trip

Annabella is pretty excited too

Redwoods

I've just about caught up on everything this week, expect a great review of Soapnutz this week. I've had a lot of cleaning to do. But I'm glad its done, Ryan will be going out of town for a few days this week, so I should have a few days to keep the place looking tidy

So, not wanting to dissapoint, I decided to put some pictures of our trip to Armstrong Woods, in Guernville, CA. I lived here while I was pregnant with Annabella, its a strange little town, and I was happy to move out, but there are lots of redwoods, so I love to go pretend I'm an elf.

Annabella was ready to go!

we should have looked at this first, but we ended up getting a little bit lost and taking a picture of the map so we would remember how to get back!

pretending I live in a tree

Heather demonstrating what way a tree grows

Annabella's first picture with the oldest tree in Armstrong woods 

We couldn't manage a picture without her trying to eat dirt

mommy and baby

Auntie Heather and Baby

I'm always a fan of water in the woods

Heather is so artsy with the Sepia

She started to get a little bit tired

crazy burnt up roots

make great photos

for all involved

I think these were roots as well

By the end of the day we were ready to go home!