Our Perfectly Sweet Getaway To Wine Country

Posted by on May 11, 2010 14 Comments

Time to relive our beautiful Sonoma vacation with a little vacay recap for you all!

We took off on Saturday, April 24th, flying Southwest because our bags flew free and because we just LOVE traveling all day in those gosh darn peppy airplanes, listening to a rendition of “Walk the Line” all about peanuts over the intercom as we land. It took us 8 hours to get from Dallas to San Francisco, by way of San Diego. (Seriously, next time we’re paying the extra $50 for luggage and shaving 5 hours off the trip.)

When we finally landed at SFO and got our rental car around 3, we were starving. Up to that point, we only had peanuts pretzels and lemon drops to nom on. (The lemon drops were a life saver/puke preventative for me since my “morning sickness” decided to kick in THAT morning. Joy.) Earlier in the day, while we waited to board in Dallas, I used my trusty Iphone (aka- the device that saved my marriage while on vacation) to make early reservations at Boudin Bakery at Fisherman’s Wharf, per a reader’s suggestion (thanks!). We got there around 4:30, and we could smell the sourdough as we drove up. The setting was spectacular, the food was fantastic (Scott had a crab sandwich and I had, get this, OMGSOYUM Macaroni and Cheese with fresh crab), and the view was great! As we sat down and looked out the window overlooking the bay we both said at the same time, “Look! Alcatraz!”

We spent most of the meal discussing how we might attempt to escape Alcatraz and remarking that it just didn’t look *that* far away. Then we headed downstairs to the little Boudin Bakery market and picked up a couple loaves of bread to take with us. Scott also got a cup of Peet’s Coffee and we walked down to Pier 39, which was very touristy, but we were tourists and we loved it. We especially loved turning the corner and suddenly realizing what “that smell” was when we saw all the fat and happy sea lions lounging on floating docks.

We walked past all the street performers back to our car and headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge by way of the SCARIEST effing road we have ever, ever driven on. It felt like we were on a roller coaster, no lie. When we peaked at the top of the hill I saw people crossing at the bottom and had a mini anxiety attack (and I wasn’t even the one driving!).  San Francisco was a beautiful city, but I’m pretty sure I’d never make it there simply because of the steep peaks of the streets. We stopped for a photo opp. on the other side of the bridge…

(did I mention it was pretty freaking cold?) and then we were off to Sonoma! The drive was absolutely beautiful. It was so surreal to approach wine country, seeing all these vineyards and wineries dot the sides of the road. We also saw a lot of happy cows and grazing sheep. I was a little taken aback by how… organic and … uh… agricultural it was. It wasn’t nearly as commercial and developed as I was expecting, which was awesome.

We checked in at our rental, which we found on VRBO.com (thanks to another reader suggestion!). The apartment was so perfect for what we needed. Though it was part of a house the owners live in, it felt completely private. We had our own private driveway and entrance. The balcony was only partly private on one side, but that was never an issue. It was only 4 miles from Sonoma Plaza, where we spent a lot of time, and it had a full kitchen. Here is a link to the listing. The price was great ($130 to $110 a night) for what we got. Although we were exhausted (even though it was only 8:30 PST) we just had to go check out Sonoma Plaza when we got in. We drove down and took a quick walk around, then headed back to the apartment to crash.

Sunday started with brunch at The Girl & The Fig, a place on nearly every “must see, must eat” list about Sonoma I’d come across. Mmmm… it was so yummy. I had stuffed French toast and Scott had a simple but delicious omelet. Then we stopped in at the Sonoma Cheese Factory on the plaza. It was cheese heaven!! Rows and rows of cheese and salami, shelves of stuffed olives and crostini. We got a nice sharp cheddar, some salami and some lemon stuffed olives (yes, stuffed with lemons!), then headed out to some wineries.

The original plan was to check out V. Sattui first, but we couldn’t even turn into the parking lot, it was that packed, so we headed to some other place across the road. It was pretty unimpressive. I mean, it was really nice, very fancy, but uh… I didn’t go on vacation to be ignored by a snooty guy behind the counter. I didn’t go there to beg someone to set us up with a tasting. We left, and I’m glad we did because while I was a little afraid that was going to be the vibe everywhere we went, I was quickly proven otherwise. We had a great experience at St. Supery (I recognized them from following me on Twitter, and decided to stop in), where we shared our first tasting and purchased a bottle of chardonnay.  Then we finished the afternoon at Robert Mondavi where we took a really interesting 2 hour behind the scenes tour that ended with another tasting. I think this was one of the best parts of the trip. Our tour guide, Channing, was so charming and fun to listen to.

Monday we spent a lot of time in the car, on winding roads. It wasn’t a great combo for me, but the sights we saw made up for it. We drove out to Bodega Bay, just in time to grab some amazing clam chowder from Spud Point Crab Company. It felt like a very authentic experience, and the chowder was what dreams are made of.

We continued up the coast line for a little bit on our way to Healdsburg. It was one of the most beautiful parts of the country I have ever seen. We stopped to take pictures and collect a little driftwood.

We continued the drive, the small roads winding through redwoods, me threatening to puke. It was all very romantic.

Healdsburg was lovely, and we stopped in at the Kendall Jackson tasting room, in honor of our first born. That’s where we met the lovely man who bestowed his wisdom all about the “magic years” on us. Dinner Monday night was takeout pizza from a surprisingly delicious place called Gramma’s Pizza. We enjoyed it from the comfort of our own living room while watching The Blind Side.

By the time Tuesday rolled around, to be honest, we were done. We ate some more food, did some more window shopping, drove to Napa and had lunch, finally, at V. Sattui, but never really “did” anything. I wasn’t feeling too great, and, shockingly, we were sort of over wine. By the time our dinner reservations at Cafe La Haye rolled around, we were already stuffed from snacking out of boredom all day and had to bring most of it home with us, I’m sure a huge insult to the chef.

We left early Wednesday morning to beat traffic getting into San Francisco and sat down for some coffee and croissants at Tartine. I was surprised at the hipster vibe the place gave off. I felt like we were somewhere in Brooklyn, and of course, we stuck out like the tourists that we were. Everyone was really nice, though, and French. All these pretty French speaking girls who could correctly pronounce “pain au jambon.”

We arrived at the airport 3 freaking hours early for our flight, I drained my Iphone battery blogging, then we took off for our grand expedition accross the southwest region of the country on our Southwest plane, flying to San Diego, El Paso and San Antonio before finally landing in Dallas that night.

Our tummies were still full, our camera loaded with great pictures, our suitcase stuffed with pieces of broken driftwood and loaves of sourdough bread, our hearts were happy and we were ready to become parents of a 2 year old. It was… just… perfect. Thank you all so much for all the fantastic recommendations! I consulted my blog comments constantly while we were there. (And can I just say, my Iphone was a huge time/sanity/relationship saver the whole time.)

For those wondering, yes, I was 6 weeks pregnant at the time. Yes, I did share a few tastings and indulge in a couple 1/2 glasses of wine while there. In total, nothing close the the ridiculous amounts of alcohol I consumed the weekend before I found out I was pregnant with Kendall, and he’s just fine… unless you consider excessive nose picking a side effect of drinking while barely pregnant.

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Please help me get out of here

Posted by on March 25, 2010 83 Comments

A couple weeks ago, after the pee meltdown, I told my husband all about my dreams for a vacation. I presented him with some fabulous options, including a weekend in Sonoma, complete with limo rides and wine tastings (this was before the positive pregnancy test).

His response? “Isn’t that all a little too fancy for Kendall?”

::head explosion::

“WE ARE NOT TAKING THE CHILD!”

I showed some all inclusive beach resort type things to him, ones that include all the pina coladas you can drink on a beach.

“You know, we don’t have to go somewhere and just drink all day, ” he said. “We need to find something that we enjoy doing, just the two of us, and make a vacation out of it.”

“Uhhh…. that’s the problem. We haven’t done anything ‘just the two of us’ in a REALLY long time, and back when we did, it mainly consisted of drinking,” I replied.

“What about cheese?” I suggested. “We like cheese. We could go to Vermont and do cheese tastings.”

That’s how lost we are when it comes to taking a vacation. It took me less than an hour to become desperate enough to suggest cheese tastings for our romantic getaway.

We have NEVER been on a vacation that doesn’t involve visiting family. And I’m not counting our “mini moon” after our wedding because it still wasn’t long enough or far enough away from family (nothing against family!).

After the miscarriage last week and all the other stress that came with it, I brought up the vacation to Scott again. I don’t think he really took me that seriously the first time around, so this time the request came with lots of tears, some yelling and phrases like “I don’t think you UNDERSTAND,” and “My life is the same EVERY DAY, ” and “I know it’s work for you, but at least you get to get out of here!”

It was a long day/night, but we finally came to an agreement, an understanding. My husband, forever frugal, is petrified to spend money on a vacation that might suck.  And all the vacations he knows will be amazing are out of our budget.

I, on the other hand, feel like 1. there are sacrifices we can make to make a vacation happen and 2. an amazing vacation (or at least one that doesn’t suck or revolve around cheese) doesn’t have to be expensive.

So here’s where I need your help. I need suggestions. I need you all to tell me about places you personally know don’t suck and won’t suck up our budget. It can be anywhere in the country (with a few exclusions). We’re pretty open to all suggestions. We were really close to booking a 3 day weekend in San Francisco, but I thought I’d do a little more research before we do.

What are we looking for?

We hope to travel at the end of April for 3 or 4 nights. We’ll be coming from Dallas. I really don’t want to do anything in TX, since we live here. Nor do I want to do anything in DC or Chicago since we also lived there. There *can* be drinking involved. That’s MY executive decision. Like, if we go to SF, I’d still really love to take a semi private tour up to Napa for some wine tastings. The budget is max $1,500, and that needs to include everything.

I don’t need you all to go surfing Priceline for me or anything. Just give me some suggestions of areas/specific places in the country you think totally rock for a romantic vacation for 2, and I’ll do the rest. I really, really appreciate it!

Kendall is one week shy of 23 months and I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to commit to a kid free vacation

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I’m melting in pee

Posted by on March 10, 2010 56 Comments

Let me paint you a picture of my life right now. I’ll hit you up with all five senses.

You can’t see the bottom of our closet through the massive mound of dirty clothes (and honestly, some of them aren’t dirty, but they’ve gone so long without getting put away that we just tossed them back in the pile), Kendall’s laundry is piled in the hall next to the laundry room, waiting for it’s turn after the pee-soaked towels are done in the wash. There are dishes stacked in the sink, my kitchen floor has visible foot prints. I am suddenly disgusted by the amount of dog drool stuck to the walls and the baseboards should be burned.

It sounds like screaming, and whining, and Diego, and a washing machine running, and a white noise machine on the in the background that I always forget to turn off after I get my terrorist toddler out of bed in the morning. It sounds like “Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, UH OH!” and like “It’s NOT an uh oh if you do it on PURPOSE”. It sounds like a giant dog pissing on my carpet AGAIN.

It feels like a grimy table that’s next to impossible to get all the stuck on granola cereal cleaned off of.  It feels like sticky tile floors. It feels like stepping in a wet puddle of pee and wondering if it’s from the boy or the dog.

It tastes like coffee, a lot of it… and then later it tastes like wine. It tastes like omelets for lunch AGAIN because I know he’ll eat eggs. It tastes like chips, secretly consumed when the kid’s not looking.

It smells like pee. It’s inescapable. It also smells like I need to vacuum AGAIN. It smells like vinegar and water cleaning solution. It smells like baking soda where I’ve tried to soak up the pee. It still smells mostly like pee.

Today I’m not holding it all together very well. Today I’m frustrated and annoyed and overcome with guilt. Today I want nothing more than a break from my son. I want the whining and the screaming and the tantrums and the turning to jelly so that I can’t possibly gracefully pick him up from the floor of the bounce house and take him home to stop. I want it to be someone else’s problem for just a little bit. I want to come home to a house that is clean and will FUCKING STAY THAT WAY. Counter to what you may think of my housekeeping skills based on the description above, I do actually clean. A. LOT.  I want my dog, my nearly 7 year old dog who has had diabetes since he was 5 months old, requiring 2 shots of insulin a day, to get his damn blood sugar under control and to stop PEEING IN MY HOUSE. I want to leave this place and go on a vacation.

Today I’m guilty. I’m drowning in guilt. It’s washing over me and beating me against a rock wall. I don’t know what’s wrong with my nearly 2 year old kid. It could be that he’s nearly 2, or it could be that he’s not feeling well. I thought about making an appointment at the pediatrician, but I really have nothing to base it off of (no fever, no runny nose, no cough, no rash) other than him seeming completely and utterly bipolar for the last week. I want to have more patience with him. I envision myself being more loving, more kind, less frustrated. I hate that I get frustrated. I HATE THAT I WANT A BREAK.

I feel guilty for not caring more about my sweet, loving English Mastiff Bruno. I mean, I do care, but it’s hard to remind myself that he can’t help peeing all over the place when his blood sugar is at 400 for the 3rd day in a row. We left the dogs over the weekend with a dog sitter checking in on them twice a day. With his blood sugar being so high, he couldn’t make it the 12 hours between visits to potty outside. We came home to a house that smells like a kennel. The dog sitter did a great job cleaning it up, but this place isn’t going to be the same until we clean the carpets.  I hate that I’m so irritated by this.

It took nearly an hour and a half to finally get out of the house this morning and head to the gym. You know, the gym that watches my kid for 2 hours? Yeah, Kendall doesn’t like the child care center. He’s been three times now and each time he sits by the door cries or whimpers the entire time we’re working out. (It doesn’t help that the last time I came to pick him up I found him playing with a file drawer and grabbing a stapler. The staff, at least the times we’ve been so far, seem apathetic and it’s starting to piss me off.) He started screaming the minute we pulled into the packed parking lot, just moments after I realized I forgot my headphones. Enough. It was enough to just say eff it. I got a coffee at a nearby drive through and headed to the bounce house. It was, of course, storming and pouring the whole time. Once there, 5 minutes of happy followed by incessant request for “nacks”, followed by inevitable meltdown.

Finally home, I fed the kid, what else, some form of eggs with cheese and veggies. While getting him ready for his nap, I made the strangest, most mind boggling discovery. I took his shoe off and noticed his sock was wet. The other one was, too, but just a tiny bit. Hmm… I thought it was probably the rain, although I figured it was weird that he didn’t seem to get wet anywhere else while we were out. I smelled the sock (like a reflex, I now smell all fluids since becoming a parent). It was soaked in PISS. The diaper? Dry. The shorts? Dry. The right shoe? Most definitely smelled like piss, too.

My dog peed on my kid.

::hands thrown in the air::

I’m done. I need a vacation. I need to go somewhere far, far away from diapers and dog piss. I want to go somewhere where the only fluid I’m smelling is wine.

Yesterday I planned to blog all about my many ideas for a vacation and ask for your opinions. Unfortunately, I just spent all my blogging time breaking down over pee.

I’ll try to get it together for the vacation post tomorrow.

Kendall is 22 months old, and I love him, I really, really, really do. More than anything. And I’m so grateful that he’s healthy and that he’s so amazing.  And I hate that I want I break, that I even think about wanting a break. I hate it.

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Misadventures of Our Traveling Family Circus

Posted by on May 15, 2009 8 Comments

I’ve been MIA this week because we decided to take a mini family vacation down to San Antonio.  Having just got back late last night, I’m still wiped out, but thought I’d take a minute to share the highlight reel with you all.

1. Sea World is actually not open every day of the week until AFTER Memorial day.  Guess I missed that important tidbit when I was researching and planning for the trip (for the whole 5 minutes it took me to plan this last minute trip).  We arrived on Tuesday morning, swimsuits on and packed for the day only to find an empty parking lot and a security guard saying, “Sorry, folks… park’s closed.”  It was a very Walley World moment, and I was glad that Kendall isn’t of age to give a shit yet.

2.  When we finally did make it to Sea World on Thursday we were, of course, excited to take Kendall to the Shamu show.  We arrived just before the show was set to start, and I saw the best seats in the house available about six rows back from the tank.  Sure it was in the “splash zone” but a little water never hurt anyone and Kendall would surely be able to see the whales through the glass and up close.  I didn’t even think twice until a trainer came up to us in the program just before the big splash part and simply pointed to Kendall and said, “I don’t know… are you sure about this?  It’s pretty cold water.”  We just looked at each other like, “Uh.. yeah?  It’s just water, right?  Shit.  Are we neglectful parents?” Seconds later we were doused with a fucking TIDAL WAVE.  Kendall took it like a champ, though, even impressing the trainer.  No tears, just a face that so clearly said, “What the HELL just happened?”  I don’t blame us, though.  I blame faulty labeling.  The word “splash” is very misleading.  If they would have properly named it the “Brace yourself for eleventybillion gallons of water IN YOUR FACE zone” we may have chosen different seats. 

3. As much as I may have previously judged parents for putting leashes on their children in the past, I have to say that if there is ever an appropriate use for a kid leash, the Riverwalk is it.  In fact, I fully intend to purchase one before heading back down there again.  You can judge me all you want.  At least I’ll be able to fish Kendall out of the river if he decides to make a running leap into it.

4. Bed & Breakfasts are all well and good when you are on a romantic getaway, but their quaintness and charm quickly transforms into annoyances and hazards when you are traveling with a toddler.  We should have opted for something with a little less personality and a little more sturdy furniture, and better air conditioning.  (How a little detail like no central a/c didn’t stand out while we were booking is beyond me.  It should be illegal to not have central a/c in San Antonio.  The devil spits in the general direction of wall units.)

5. Trying to go out for dinner with a toddler is akin to giving a cat a bath.  It is loud and messy and unpleasant for all, especially when dinner happens to be at bedtime (but what are you gonna do when bedtime happens to be 7:30?).  Food was thrown, drinks spilled, and add to that the sheer exhaustion from being up since 6:30 am (since, apparently, toddlers think it’s awesome to wake up at the ass crack of dawn on vacation), and, well…. I really don’t think I need any more words to describe the following photo.

But, what would a family vacation be with out a few bumps in the road?  I mean, years from now, the stories we will most likely remember and tell Kendall and maybe his kids about our first family vacation won’t be about all the things that went right. They will be about all the laughs we had at the things that went wrong, even if we weren’t able to really laugh at them until we got home to our air conditioned, toddler proofed home, after a full night of sleep.

Kendall is 1 year, 1 week and 6 days old.

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