I tried and failed

Well, earlier I tried to post this really complex photo blog about our trip to Napa. Turns out that Blogger hates freedom, puppies and rainbows and wouldn't let me upload photos. So now...for the waaaaaaaayyyy overdue Napa trip photo blog.

Well, no trip to California is complete without a trip to In-n-Out. Yes, I'm fully aware that there's one in Dallas (which I will go to in November) but the cool part about the California ones is that they have short lines and good quality veggies on their burgers. That's something you can't get at the DFW locations. So a cheeseburger (animal style, of course) and strawberry shake later, we were on our way to downtown Sacramento.

Off we went to the state capitol building. I had never been in the capitol building, so I got a little picture happy. It was a very pretty capitol building, which was refreshing. I hate when states have lame state capitol buildings. Florida, for example, has a very ugly state capitol building. is also a And don't get me started on You would think with nothing to do in your state, you would have plenty of time to construct a nice building. Anyway, long story short, California's capitol building is quite lovely on the outside. The inside leaves something to be desired, but is still nice. The whole downtown area of Sacramento was surprising lovely. After the capitol tour, we just sat in the capitol courtyard and relaxed. So great.

The one interesting part inside the capitol building was this giant bear. Yes. That's a bear guarding the Governor's Office. It's giant. It's metal. It's a bear. It's California. Not quite sure why this fake bear is supposed to be intimidating to intruders. Truth be told, I wanted to ride it. Instead, I just took this silly picture with it while the London-Regiment-Soldier-wanna-be-rent-a-cop stood behind me at attention. You know he's jealous.

Now on to the wine drinking. Let the record reflect that this is one of the best vacations we've ever taken. Between drinking all day, drinking all night, hot tubbing and seeing the beautiful countryside, this trip really embodies relaxation with activity. Pretty sure this is a trip that we will be making often. That aside done, David and I had a day alone before BOI joined us. So, we went to a couple of wineries and then went to dinner that night. This one in particular in the photo was William Hill. Over 200 acres of wine-producing vines. Absolutely stunning.

Well, the more wine I got in me, the more artsy I tried to get with my photography. I can't guarantee that any of them ended up good, but I did like this one. We went to this first winery where the owner was actually from Denver, ironically. Also, the bartender ended up being a Longhorn which was also awesome. So, we all drank some wine and then went outside to play horseshoes. Turns out their horseshoe course was unusually large, so I think that contributed to the crappy play.

One of the best wineries we went to was actually called Stelzner. It was really relaxing, we did our tasting outside at a table and ate our picnic lunch that we had packed. It was so nice. Here's another artsy photo from that winery. What? I got excited! I haven't been in that pretty of a place for vacation in a bit, so this was my opportunity. Either way, it was lovely.

So, besides all of this important wine drinking that we did...we also had some equally-as-important ingenuity. For instance, let's say that you want to go to the hot tub. Let's say that hot tub doesn't alloy glass containers. Let's say you had purchased a bottle of wine that day that you had bought with the expressed purpose of drinking it while you were hot tubbing. Well, you better than you lucky stars that you married a man like David who is genius enough to realize since we didn't have a funnel, we had a Ziploc bag. And if you cut off the corner of that Ziploc bag and pour the wine into it and tuck the open corner into the water bottle, you have a wine bottle that's plastic all of the sudden. Bam.

Let's not exclude the fact that this trip was as much for our anniversaries as it was for our husband's birthdays. David's birthday is a day before Ian's, so we usually celebrate them jointly. So, this year: It was Napa. Brandan and I wanted to bake a cake for them (thought it would be a good idea). Then, suddenly, we realized that we didn't have an oven in our rental house. We only had a sink, stove top and microwave inside and a gas grill outside. So, Brandan went to law school for multiple reasons. But, one of the reasons was that she realized we could bake the cake in the grill outside. Genius. There's the boys pretending we were rich enough to buy birthday candles.

So, overall, after all of the wine and all of the time we spent together, we had a blast and can't wait to do it again!