Burn Baby Burn

This weekend provided the perfect weather (cold, rainy/drizzly, and not too windy) for Justin to finally burn our humongous burn pile. We've been adding to it all year. And when 12 of your acres are heavily wooded, we have no shortage of dead trees and limbs to annihilate. This was just the tip of the iceberg of future bonfires.

Justin dug a deep hole on Saturday in preparation for burning it on Sunday while it rained and drizzled. Unfortunately, I did not get an opportunity to take a picture of the burn pile before Justin had already burned a majority of it, but it was massive!

To the left is some of the dirt from the hole he dug out with the tractor.

Adding more fuel as it burns down

Once there was a tree...

Or 14 trees. We extended the tree line along our road fence with alternating live oak and water oak trees. We bought twelve 5 gallon size trees and two 15 gallon size. The bigger ones are on either side of the front gate. They are 20 feet apart as instructed by our neighbor, who was our hook-up for a great deal on all of the trees. Our neighbor works at a local tree farm, and although they are a wholesaler and don't sell to the public, we were able to score these trees below wholesale prices. They are considered second rate, unsellable trees. Due to growing crooked (supposedly) or the buds weren't up to par or whatever, these trees had been picked over by the buyers for the different retail outlets (nurseries and such). With that in mind, when we saw the trees for the first time, they looked like perfectly good trees to us. As long as they grow, they look good to me!

Unfortunately we don't have a post hole digger, so Justin did it all by hand. It took him awhile but they are finally all in. I filled up the 35 gallon tank and helped water them. :)

Daddy's helper

Just chewing on this deer rib bone I found.

Little helpers:

Happy Halloween!

I made Mattie's costume for a total of $4. The antenna were on sale for $3.50 and the ladybug wings I made from two pieces of felt for $0.50. I cut into them into the shapes below and sewed just a few inches down the top and a small piece of velcro on the straps in the front to hold it together like a cape. So simple and easy. Then I bought her a black shirt and pants to wear with it.

Here she is on Halloween in her full costume, about to go on the annual hayride in the Grandparent's neighborhood.

For Levi, I cheated and just bought a dinosaur costume from Target. He loved his costume and it fit his personality perfectly. He got to roar to his heart's delight.

This was right after Gram had to take Mattie back to the house because she was COVERED in chocolate. She got into a melted Reese's peanut butter cup and was going to town on it! I put on her antenna that got left behind.

Here are some pictures from earlier in the day, before costumes. I whipped up Mattie's dress on Tuesday night so she could wear it to school on Wednesday. I may or may not have procrastinated on that all month. But hey, I got it done!

And at the end of the night, we had so much candy that I weighed it on a bathroom scale. 18.2 lbs. That's how much candy we collected. I think we'll be bringing some with us to the family Thanksgiving. And Christmas.

Napa Wine Trip

I never just post something about me, but I have gone on two wine trips recently, so I thought I'd share a little about my adventures.

Napa Valley September 22-27, 2014

First, this trip had been planned all year long. My friend Erica organized and arranged everything which meant all I had to do was show up and drink wine! She was the only person I knew out of our 6 girl trip. But we all had a blast and I made new friends that I would love to travel with again. Here's a rundown of what we did:

Monday: Flew in to San Francisco, drove to Napa where we rented a house to stay at. Ran to the grocery store for some basics, ordered dinner and relaxed in the hot tub as everybody got in.

Tuesday: Breakfast at The Boon Fly Cafe which was delicious before we had a private tour at MacLeod Family Vineyard, which I highly recommend. The 93 year old owner, George, sat and gave us the history of the vineyard as we tasted wine on a picnic table under a tree overlooking the vineyards. Beautiful. I bought his book and had him sign it for me. I also had a chance to talk to him 1 on 1 for about 20 minutes. He is full of interesting stories!

Then we stopped at a couple of other wineries on this side of the valley (Sonoma area) before heading back to the house for dinner and relaxing.

Wednesday: First stop, Grgich Hills, where they had a deal going for a wine tasting and grape stomp! It was fun to do and mark that off the bucket list.

Next was a trip over to Yountville with a stop in the Hope and Grace tasting room followed by some delectable treats from Bouchon Bakery.

After grabbing a quick sandwich from a local deli, we hurried over to the Del Dotto winery for our scheduled tour there. It's a unique tour because it's done in this really old cave where you sample the wines straight from the barrel. I lost count of how many wines we sampled there, and I highly recommend this tour to anybody planning a visit. They have two locations - this was the cave tour one.

 

We followed this with dinner at a really nice place but I can't remember the name!

Thursday: Hiking in the redwoods! We were all really excited for this and it felt good to get out and exercise a bit after eating and drinking so heavily all week. We drove about an hour and a half to the Armstrong Redwoods State Park and chose a "Moderate 2.3 mile trail with 500' switchback climb". We carried a picnic lunch with us and took off. It rained on us a little bit and it was cool weather - perfect for a hike! I think we all had a blast and definitely got our exercise for the day.

After a quick wine tasting stop, and a coffee stop, we somehow ended up on a road we had been trying to avoid but it worked out because we ended up being able to stop at Castello di Amorosa which looked really cool. It ended up being the perfect way to end our trip! I even bought some wine from here to bring back home. We didn't do the castle tour but that would probably be fun to do in a future trip. I'd defintiely come back here.

We followed this with dinner in Napa. I had a delicious burger from Gott's Roadside.

Friday: Flew home!