Pacific Northwest Vakay Day 1

Well friends, here it is-today I start my journey of telling you our amazing road trip story. It was incredible. I think I should keep my thesaurus close by because I need multiple synonyms for words like: beautiful, amazing, and fun. But I am not going to do that so feel free to insert your own synonyms when you reach those frequently used words!

Day zero: I call this day zero because this was an extra day not totally planned into our trip. I came back from my amazing trip home, made some snacks, packed my bags and we hit the road. 

We got a pretty early start and were able to stay the night in California between LA and San Francisco. 

Day one: I must say, we did not get off to the best start. We had some extra time and thought we should go for breakfast at Denny's to get a good start to our road trip. We were seated almost immediately. We ordered our drinks and food as soon as we could. After about 40 minutes of waiting, we were getting a little antsy. We knew we had some extra time since we started out so early the day before. We finally found someone, not our waitress, that we could ask to check on our food. No answer...Fifteen minutes later we had mustered up the courage to tell the manager we were leaving. After a few minutes we found him and told him we had to leave. We had not been in a time crunch but were now indeed in a time crunch since we had waited over an hour to get our food. Good news-I got my orange juice for free!! We still are not sure if they had even started making our food or if it had been sitting under heat lamps for 30+ minutes. Also, maybe our waitress decided to quit after she took our order?? Not sure, but I did see a huge bug roaming around during our wait so it was probably best we did not eat there. Instead we drove through Burger King and still had to wait about 20 minutes to get our food. It was not our greatest start, but you know when they say things can only go up from here-it was true. We got to Napa 

and headed to our first winery-Silverado Vineyards. 

How gorgeous is this view?!? It was so beautiful!!!

I would definitely recommend this vineyard. It was very relaxed, but the servers were very helpful!

Then we headed to the Beringer vineyard. It is the oldest continuously operating vineyard in the Napa valley.

Since it was the 4th of July Matt thought I needed to show my patriotism. This is what we found-

Then we took a tour of the vineyard. Where we learned some very interesting facts, 

saw some really cool things, 

and were taught the appropriate way to sample wine.

Following the tour we took our own tour around the property. 

It was so beautiful!

Then we headed north. One cool thing about a road trip is you never know what you are going to see. A nice surprise, we got to see Mount Shasta. It seemed so tall standing on its own.

Sorry, the pictures are really blurry-we were driving.

That night we made it to Oregon and were able to cross off a new state for us on day one! Hope you enjoyed my first look-back onto our trip. Stay tuned for more :) 

For Day 2 click HERE.

For Day 3 click HERE.

For Day 4 click HERE.

For Day 5 click HERE.

For Day 6 click HERE.

For Day 7 click HERE.

For Day 8 click HERE.

For Day 9 click HERE.

Home Sweet Home

Again it has been too long since I have updated everyone on what has been going on. Summer has been crazy! As you know we just went on the road trip of our lives. I plan to post one day of the trip each day from here on out. The key word in the sentence was PLAN. But before we did that, I took a vacation of my own. 

Since I have finished school forever I thought it was FINALLY time I took a trip home. It was so great to see so many friends and family! The time flew by as it always does every time I am home, but I am very thankful for the time I got to spend there. Here is the synopsis of my trip!

My flight was one interesting experience. They were late boarding our plane. They had us all go stand outside and wait. 

After about 10 minutes they opened the emergency exit in the back and all of us in the back of the plane got to board that way. Everyone else got the normal treatment. We also got to exit the plane in the same manner. It was very interesting but did save us some time.

While at home, I spent a few hours studying but found some time for fun. My parents finished their fire pit so we enjoyed some s'mores on the most beautiful evening ever. 

Summer nights were not like this when I lived in Nebraska. It was absolutely gorgeous!

We spent a few hours taking a girls' day and saw The Fault in Our Stars. I thought it was good, but oh so sad. 

I also was there for the fair but before the festivities could start the work had to be done. Jadyn and Atlee spent many frantic hours slaving away in the kitchen to finish their fair entries. I just helped taste test!

I also got to see some other things that I don't get to experience in Arizona-WEATHER!!! 

We had a nice storm roll in; I thought I better capture it. 

We are entering monsoon season in AZ but I'm not sure if we will see clouds like this.

Saturday we got to go test drive vehicles to raise money for the school. Naturally, I chose the most conservative one there...

We had a good time. Not quite like the Tesla test drive I took earlier this year, but I had much more freedom to drive where I wanted.

Atlee also had her softball tournaments while I was home so I got to sneak in a game!

Then the Sunday activities were underway and we were in full swing fair mode. We did the Fun Run Sunday morning. It was a major family affair!

Sunday night we headed to the park. We watched the band perform. They were missing many members, but they still sounded very good! I am sure this is mostly due to their amazing teacher! ;)



They also did the crowning of Miss Bertrand. Jadyn was one of the contestants, and since I missed her at prom it was so nice to see her in her prom dress.







Isn't she the cutest!?!!! :)

Tuesday was the parade. I had not been to the parade since I graduated from high school. I couldn't even tell you the last time I got to watch the parade and not participate. It was a nice change.



One of the events I was most excited about coming home for was the rodeo. I attended both nights and had lots of fun! A couple of my friends, Angela and Alyssa, joined me on Tuesday night. It was a very exciting rodeo. It was the most entries they had ever had.

I also got to enjoy a couple quick trips to the lake. They were not long enough, but it was nice to get there for a few minutes. 

It was so great seeing so many friends I hadn't seen in such a long time. And enjoying some sweet treats with some of my favorite people! 

Celebrate Good Times

Hello friends. We are still surviving the heat; in fact we are enjoying it. A few exciting things have happened to us this week. On Tuesday Matt sent me a text saying something exciting was happening at work. I was so excited as soon as I got off fieldwork I ran to Target for some celebratory things. Some great wife skillz here. 

 I went all out-took the cookies out of the package and popped them in the oven. They were on the plate just before Matt walked in the door. Yes, great (cheating) wife skillz, I know. But let me tell you, those cookies were AMAZING!!!! Coincidentally, the same day I bought some champagne and cookies to celebrate, the first smell text was sent. It was, you guessed it-champagne and cookies.

So I suppose you are wondering what the exciting news was all about. Well let me share. Since Matt performed exceptionally well (bragging wife moment) on his Series exams, he will be teaching his new colleagues to help them prepare for their exams. I am so excited for him! He will be such an excellent teacher. This is so up his alley!! He will do that for a couple months, and then who knows? CEO....? 

I also finished my fieldwork this past week. Yes, I am DONE FOREVER!!! I have completed 21 years of school, and I cannot believe it is done! To show my thankfulness for my amazing supervisor I made her a wreath. I was so excited-she loved it! It was nice to get back to crafting. 

So with all our great news this week, we headed to Scottsdale to celebrate. We were going to try a fancy place but instead settled on an incredible burger joint we will definitely frequent. 

As we were walking around we saw the biggest cockroach ever! I know it is dark, but do you see this thing!?!

Then we found some live music and enjoyed the rest of the evening. It was nice to get out for a change of pace. 

Saturday we were planning to finally go see 22 Jump Street. Matt had gotten some free movie passes at work, and the theater still wouldn't let us use them. So instead, we found a little more live music and then headed to Dave & Buster's for game night. We were really excited we found a Wheel of Fortune game and won TONS of tickets-like 400+ in one round! Our old timer ways of watching Wheel of Fortune nightly really paid off for us!   

We finished off with some ski ball, basketball and Guitar Hero. We used some of our winnings to get some candy and enjoyed it by the fire. 

Today we did get a chance to catch 22 Jump Street-with our free passes. It was of course, as great as I was expecting. The whole theater was lolling like crazy during the entire movie. Hope you all had a great week! We also started making our second batch of wine-Apple Jack. It should be ready just in time for apple cider season. Even though I will miss my fieldwork, I am much looking forward to the break in action, and hopefully, more frequent blog posts!

A week of strawberries

Hi friends! Long time, no chat. We have been somewhat busy doing boring adult things. Not much fun to share. Let me fill you in.

Last Friday we celebrated National Donut Day by trying out a new wave of doughnut shops-Fractured Prune. We watched them bake the doughnut right in front of us, and then we chose the icing and topping. My favorite was probably s'mores, but the strawberry shortcake was a close second. So yummy!

 

Last Saturday we volunteered with some of Matt's colleagues at Feed My Starving Children. 

We spent one quick hour putting food together and filling them into boxes as fast as we could. We had a great time. 

Our group packed over 100 boxes to send overseas to malnourished children.

Last night we went to Usery Mountain Pass for a Full Moon Hike under the strawberry moon. We took a two mile hike and had a ton of fun. The full moon was awesome, and I even walked with the moon guiding us without a flashlight for a while!

Some of our friends brought a black light and we were able to see some real live scorpions. It was our first encounter with scorpions and hopefully I don't ever get any closer to them than that! I didn't know some of them grew that big! And look at how they glow.

This is my last week of fieldwork, and then I fill be done with school forever!!! I cannot believe it! I will be studying for boards, and then no more studying! It's hard to believe the end of this long, difficult, rewarding journey is almost here.

Also we have started making our own wine from strawberries! It should be done in a few weeks. I will be sure to let you know how it turns out! Stay tuned for some new recipes coming soon! :)