The Farm

Gail had foot surgery on Wednesday, so she was closed for a couple of days.  Scott stayed home with the boys on Wednesday and I took Thursday off to be with the boys.  Since Thursday is Jenn's day off, we planned to meet at 'The Farm', see the animals and have a picnic.

We played in the sandbox for a while.  Karsten really liked the digger.


Hey there Hollywood!


The kids started off by feeding the ducks.


Karsten and Elam enjoyed watching the pigs.  Eden wasn't so interested so she sat in the swing.


Same pose, different animal :)


Posing in front of the waterfall.


After visiting several animals, we ate our picnic lunch then headed over to get ice cream. Ice cream was the first thing Karsten asked about when we got to the farm - he has a good memory!




Liam was tired of sitting in the stroller, so he got to get out for a bit.  He had a good time talking to Eden.




The obligatory group shot by the tractor.




We played on the tractor for a few more minutes after Jenn and the kids left.


This little guy was getting tired so we headed home after a fun day at the farm.

Happy 10 Months

Liam turned 10 months old while we were in California.  These 10 months have gone so quickly - it's been fun to watch him grow and learn.  It's also been interesting to watch Karsten adjust to having Liam as part of our family.  He loves Liam (obviously); however, we've seen more signs of jealously lately. 

Here are the things Liam is doing now: 

• He is cruising around furniture
• He gets into EVERYTHING.  Madison's water bowl, our wine cabinet, cords/cables are all favorites for him to get into.  He has all sorts of toys to play with, but those aren't as fun.  
• He is babbling more and saying baa and da da.  Not sure if he is associating da da with Scott yet.  I keep working on ma ma, but so far no luck. :) 
• He loves to blow raspberries and ends up with his shirt all wet.  
• He can clap and put his hands together to ask for more during dinner.  
• He likes to wave.  
• He's started to make a funny, scrunched up face when we tell him no.  We've only seen it a couple of times, but it's pretty funny.  
• He had his first ear infection the week we left for California.  When we went to the dr, he weighed 25 lbs! 
• He's eating the same things we are, just cut into small pieces.  
• He loves Cheerios and gets a big smile when he sees the container or box.  
• When he gets excited and is sitting on the floor, he bounces up and down with his feet together (think indian style) and scoots across the floor.  
• He likes to be outside playing and cries when we have to go inside.  
• His hair is crazy (as you can see from the pics below).  He has two cowlicks in the front and one on the side that keeps it from laying down.  It does a fauxhawk pretty well when it has some wax in it, but  I'm hoping for a more low maintenance style for day to day.  

Wordless Wednesday - Let's play outside

Sweet, Sweet Home

We had a great time on our long weekend, but we were ready to see the boys! We video chatted with them on Thursday night, but then they both had trouble going to sleep that night, so we decided that we wouldn't video chat again because it seemed to make them miss us more.  After a few days, Karsten was challenging Grandma and Papa's rules and was being quite whiny.  I think he was a bit homesick for us.

Liam was playing when we got to my parents house and his little face lit up when he saw us.  He kept looking back and forth between us like 'you're really here!'.  Karsten was napping but woke up shortly after we got there - Scott went up to get him and I heard him exclaim 'DADDY!'.  He was so excited.  He came downstairs saying 'Is Mommy here too?'

It was quite a welcome.  :)

Big thanks to my parents for watching the boys while we were gone!

When we pulled into our driveway at home, Karsten said 'Ahh, sweet sweet home'

Wine, waves and sushi

We started Saturday with breakfast overlooking the ocean.  I posted the night-time view from here the other day - it's equally beautiful during the day!


Nice view for breakfast!


Our rental - we had fun driving this around Santa Barbara.


Wine country!  We took a wine tour that took us to four vineyards in the San Ynez valley.  We learned about the history of the area, got a tour into one of the fields and got a behind the scenes look at winemaking.  It was a great day!


Our tour guide was Shawn, the owner of Wine Edventures. He's been doing tours for ten years and had a bunch of great info and stories to share.


We got to tour the barrel room oat the Koehler vineyard.  It was 50ish degrees in there which felt fabulous since it was 95 degrees outside.


In order to get grapevines to produce, you have to stress them out.  Growers do this in different ways - they plant them closer together, plant them in rocky soil and stake them vertically like this.  Besides stressing out the vines, staking them like this makes it easier to pick the fruit because it is all at the same level.


We got to go into the fields and sample a few grapes.  I don't remember what kind of grapes they were, but they were very sweet.  Much sweeter than the grapes we get at the grocery store.


This was the second vineyard we went to.  After our tasting here, we had lunch in their shady courtyard.


Enjoying our lunch and the beautiful (albeit hot) day.




It was getting close to harvest, so many of the vineyards had put netting over the vines to keep birds from eating the grapes.


After a long day of wine tasting, you need food!  We had a few restaurant recommendations that we thought about checking out; however, we enjoyed our sushi so much the previous night, so we went back!

We had our favorite roll again.  It looks like each chef has his own way of decorating the plate with the different sauces.


The sushi chef recommended this one - I don't know everything that was in it, it was some kind of shrimp curry roll.  It was fantastic.


After dinner, we stopped by the wharf to watch the sun set.




It was the perfect way to end our vacation because bright and early the next morning we were headed home to our boys!  We missed them so much!

Tourists

After my conference wrapped up on Friday, we headed out to be tourists and enjoy Santa Barbara.


We went down to the wharf and walked along the seashore.


I had a recommendation to check out a wine tasting room on the wharf, so we relaxed and had a glass of wine.


What a great view!


The pelicans and seagulls got a bit too close for comfort.  They would swoop down right over your head and land near you.  A few times I ducked because I thought they were dive bombing me!


We asked a couple sitting near us to take our picture.  The wife said she was about to offer because we looked so relaxed watching the water.


We posed for this one, but this is how we were sitting before we gave her our camera. :)


This boat went past the wharf and it was being trailed by all of these birds.  We thought it may have been a fishing excursion or that they were throwing fish to the birds.


We checked out the Santa Barbara Mission.


Beautiful architecture and grounds.  We didn't pay the entry fee to go inside because they were closing in less than an hour.


I loved this fountain with the floating lilies and all of the plants in the center.




The view from along the road on the way to the mission.


We did some research to find a good sushi restaurant for dinner.  Yelp lead us to this fabulous restaurant.  It was tiny so we had to wait a bit for a table, but it was well worth it.  The sushi was so fresh and the rolls were unique and unlike anything we've had.

I don't remember the names of all of the rolls, but I took pictures of each of them because they were beautifully presented.


The next two pictures were press box sushi.  You'll notice there is no seaweed wrapper on the roll.  They put all of the ingredients for the roll into a wooden box and press it together.  I think this roll was my favorite.




This was the super protein roll - there were several kinds of fish on the top and a tasty seaweed salad in the middle.  YUM!


I took this one for Scott - he likes palm trees and I thought it looked pretty all lit up at night.


A great day sightseeing!