My (not so) Relaxing 2-Week Vacation!

I am lucky enough to have 2 weeks off over the Christmas holiday, and I was extremely excited that Jamie and I were NOT planning on traveling across the country. I am simply too large and too tired to do any major traveling, even though I love to visit family and friends. The thought of staying in California for winter break was wonderful. However, I forgot that California is a big state, and there is a lot that can be done in two weeks here.

Within the past two weeks, Jamie and I have been to Napa, San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County, Temecula, Escondido, and various other locations in Southern California. Jamie has me beat with trips to Tahoe and New York City. Yes, we're busy people, and we apparently can't just sit in our house doing relaxing things, such as napping or watching movies.

Just before Christmas, our friend Bridget made the trip from Florida to visit. When we weren't spending our time trying to locate Bridget's luggage (which never made it, by the way), we were visiting some of Northern California's great attractions, such as Napa and San Francisco. Jamie and Bridget had a lot of fun touring three different wineries while I played the role of designated driver. (I'd like to say that we drew straws for that position, and I came up with the short one, but alas, I am the pregnant person that everyone loves having around due to my inherent role as a DD) We started at Robert Sinskey Winery, which does a food pairing along with the wine tasting. I've been there twice now and have yet to actually sample the wines; but I can say that they do have some very tasty cheeses. For lunch, we stopped at the Oakville Grocery for some delicious sandwiches.
This was probably my favorite part of the day since I can't get enough of their Curried Chicken Sandwich. We also visited two other wineries, Paraduxx and Frog's Leap. We've been trying to visit Frog's Leap during our last few trips to Napa, but they're closed on Sundays and only do tastings by appointment. This time we got lucky. It was a very cool experience, even as the sober bystander. The vines are completely organically farmed--they use no irrigation systems and no pesticides, herbicides, etc. They also run their winery completely on solar energy using solar panels. I highly recommend visiting the website; it's both fun and informative!

We also took Bridget to San Francisco. We went to the beach, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, and took a Cable Car ride through many parts of San Francisco.

Finally, in our newest Butler tradition, we made homemade pierogies and mushroom for Christmas Eve dinner. We started making this dinner last year when we realized that we wouldn't be visiting our friend Dave's grandma's house since we were staying in California over the holidays. It is something we look forward to all year long! We even made Jamie's family's special raisin bread, which will also be made every Christmas.

I will post Part II (southern California) of our holiday fun in another post.