Garden Treasures

Yesterday we feasted on our garden delights. We also enjoyed some of our fresh basil, and oregano with our meal. This most interesting thing in this pic is the apple. I thought we had a flowering pear tree. But my mother in law found this apple on it. We all enjoyed a piece and we are all still here today. So anyone ever heard of a flower pear-apple tree??

Eat your heart out Martha Stewart

Mmmm... nothing is more symbolic of a late summer eve but a warm peach pie, Ryan's favourite.

Can't wait to dig into this tasty treat.

Up, Up, and Away with Hot Air and Wine

On the next day, which was Saturday, we pulled our luggage a couple of blocks to the Hertz rental center. I won't even get started on the Hertz rental car center other than to say it was a horrible long hour and a half waiting outside while all these people moved cars around in a chaotic fashion and no one seemed to be leaving with a rental car.

Anyways, we got into our little red car and headed north out of the city of San Francisco. We were on our way to the wine country - Sonoma. Historically, Sonoma is the original place where wine making started. The town of Sonoma began in 1823 when missionary Jose Altimira declared Sonoma Valley as the best site he had seen for a new mission. We really loved the city of Sonoma, it has the Sonoma plaza which is a town square and is the largest of its kind in California. It was built in 1836, turning Sonoma from a mission town to a Mexican style pueblo. It also has the original city hall which is in the center of the Plaza and was originally designed with four identical facades so that merchants from any side of the square could say the City Hall faced their businesses. All around the Sonoma plaza where unique shops. Our favourite was the cheese shop. We stopped there as soon as we got into town and bought some cheese for our picnic at one of the wineries for that afternoon.

The first winery that I wanted to go to was called Benzinger's Family Winery. This winery interested me because they had a tram tour which consisted of you riding along in a wagon through their vineyard and the "farmer" explaining how they produce their wine. On this 85 acres of vineyard the Benzinger family uses organic and Biodynamic wine growing practices.

The Massey 375 tractor pulls a tram of visitors through the Sonoma estate vineyards, gardens and wildlife sanctuaries for a 45-minute adventure in winegrowing. Along the way, we stopped to take a closer look at the vines, taste the grapes.We also got to learn more about the site-specific farming practices and enjoy the breathtaking scenery. We also got to visit the underground estate caves and our tour ended with the wine tasting in Glen Ellen tasting room.

We really liked this winery as it was all organic and I enjoyed the tour, as I didn't know much about wine making, and now I know a little bit more. We then headed off to another winery called "Imagery". This winery is owned and operated by the Benzinger Family, so we got a free wine tasting at this location from the Benzinger farm. Eager to make the wines at Imagery more distinctive, the Benzinger Family established this new and remarkable wine facility. The focus at this winery is small case production of several varieties including some unusual types. The Imagery Artist collection of wines features beautiful labels created by various artists. The tasting room features a gallery of wine label art as well as other works of art. You won’t find any of these wines for sale in stores or restaurants. The wines are sold only through the winery. We really enjoyed Imagery's wines and here we decided to join the wine club. This means that 6 times a year we will receive 2 bottles of wine from them. The wines where very tasty here, and the different labels all with the Benzinger Parthenon on it made it so unique. Each artist is given the creative freedom to make the label as he or she wishes, however it must contain the Benzinger Parthenon, which is located on the Benzinger farm.

It was here, after our many wine tastings, that we had our picnic. We sat under a tree and had fresh sour dough bread, cheese, fresh strawberries, and danishes. It was really lovely.

We then headed back to the town of Sonoma to check into our Inn. We stayed at the MacArthur Place which was located just blocks from the Sonoma Plaza. It was a 64 room Inn which was originally a prestigious 300 hundred-acre vineyard and working ranch with prized horses. We stayed in the original manor house, which has 10 rooms and was built in 1850. This place had a spa, which I didn't have time to utilize, it had a heavenly outdoor pool, and lovely gardens. This was a great day. The only downfall was that I had one heck of a cold at this time. Good thing there was no close ups of me because me nose was pretty raw!

Now, the next day I had a surprise for Ryan. I had told him as soon as I saw him when I got to San Francisco, I guess I am not very good at keeping surprises. I had booked a hot air balloon ride for the next morning with a company called Balloons over the Valley. With the help of the concierge at the MacArthur Place, we were booked on a 5:30 am excursion to balloon over the Napa Valley. Now, like I had said earlier there was a lot of fog in the San Francisco area, well it followed us to Napa. So when we got picked up at 5:30, Amy, our driver, said that we would be flying over an area called Winter's because the Napa valley was too foggy and we wouldn't see anything. This turned out to be to our benefit as we learned later. The balloons can not go as high in the valley as they can in the area that we we went. And it was very clear that day, we could see upwards to 70 miles, all the way to Sacramento. We went up with 14 other people and we went to a height of 3800 feet!

Here is a couple of ballons getting inflated. A fan is used to blow cool air into the balloon. Later the burners are used to heat the air as the balloon lies on the ground. Gradually the balloon will rise to an upright position.This is our balloon getting inflated. It was called Journey.

This is looking up into the balloon from where we were standing.

Here we are getting ready for take off. We had great location for good views during our flight.
Here is our shadow as we started to drift away. They fly in the early morning because it is the time when the earth is at its calmest. Just before sunrise is when the weather is the coolest and the winds are the calmest which is ideal for ballooning. We were in air for probably about 1 hour and 1/2. We went up to a height of 3800 feet. It was very quite up there, no one really spoke. It was very peaceful.
Here are some pics from our flight...

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This was our landing spot. We were in constant communication with our "chase crew" on the ground. One of the guys had to run up that long lane way and ask for permission to see is we could land in their field. We received permission and landed on the far side of this picture.This is a picture of our "chase crew" turning around as we had originally planned to land near that cemetery, all those white specks are crosses, but we had to fly on as the air currents were not going to let us land.Here I am back on land as they roll up the balloon and push out the hot air and put it away until the next flight.

We then headed back to Napa for a Champagne brunch celebration. We received a pin saying that we had flown in a hot air balloon, and we bought a couple of photos from the ride.

Sonoma was definitely the highlight of our trip. We loved the Sonoma valley's beauty and bounty of the wine country. We enjoyed the winery tastings and the tour. The hot air balloon ride was a superb way to end our stay in Sonoma. As I said before, it was just so peaceful and surreal just floating on air - all your worries seemed miles away. I would highly recommend both Sonoma and Balloons over the Valley for a great vacation.

Memories from San Francisco

Ryan had to go to San Francisco for about 10 days a couple of weeks ago. So I went to "pick him up" at the end of his business trip and bring him home.

San Francisco is a pretty unique place. I would have to venture to say that it is one of the only places that I found myself buying a winter coat and scarf on a July evening in California.

We had a whirl wind trip and here are some photos from our time in the "San Francisco treat".

When I arrived on Thursday, Ryan had to work the day so I got into our hotel room and did what any women would do - Go shopping. I had strategically booked a hotel room in the shopping district.

The first night we jumped on the cable car and headed down to "Fisherman's Wharf" and walked around the pier area. Here we could see Alcatraz, as you can see below, we also so the sea lions playing at the pier, and we had the great sour dough bread with some fresh soup. It was a very cold night, and here is where I bought my coat.

The next day we walked, and walked and walked some more. I think we walked for like 10 hours. This is a typical trip for the Hewletts. So we started off the day by going and seeing Grace Cathedral. Which of course is on the top of a hill. San Francisco is up and down all the time, thus causing one to be hot on one street and then cool on the next street.

We then headed off to "Alamo Square". For any of you children of the 80's, you may recall at the beginning of "Full House" when they taped them in the park with the nice houses behind them, this is that spot. We went to see the "Painted ladies", which are the row of houses that have become many post cards from San Francisco.

We then headed off to the "Hippie" center of San Francisco in the 70's, where Janis Joplin lived and the Grateful dead. This is known as Haight/ Asbury area. This place is still pretty "out there" with the smell of incense on the streets, retro clothing stores with what I am sure I witnessed some people still enjoying the recreational drugs that have made this district famous. I was pretty tired by this time so we found a park that I am sure housed some suspect individuals, but at that point I didn't care and I found a place to lay back and relax.

We then carried on our journey to the Golden Gate Park, which is like the Stanley park of San Francisco. Really, really huge and lots to see and do. We went to the Shakespeare gardens which was pretty neat. We went into their massive arboretum and we walked and walked some more. We found a grassy area to have yet another rest. Inside the Golden Gate Park there is a Japanese Tea house, so we went over to see that.

We finally decided to catch a bus to make it to our dinner reservations. I had booked a dinner at a restaurant called the "Cliff House". It is directly on the Pacific ocean and it is supposed to have awesome sunsets. However, when I called they did not tell me that it is their foggy season and that we would probably not see the sun at all, let alone setting. It was a pretty nice spot though, and we did see a guy propose to his girlfriend.

All in all, we had a great day. After dinner we hopped back on the bus which took us right to our hotel where we were glad to kick off the sneakers and soak our feet in a hot bath.

A long awaited update

The sun has been shining and calling me to the great outdoors, so I have not been very punctual at keeping up with my blogging. So here is an update on what is shakin in my neck of the woods.

We had a father's day brunch on Father's day for Ryan's dad. His family had been visiting for the weekend and I took the opportunity to host my first ever brunch. I quite enjoyed the brunch. It was great weather so we were able to sit outside on our back porch. I made 3 different kinds of quiches, salad, fresh cinnamon buns, fruits and veggies and fresh strawberry pies for dessert. It was a really nice day.

In late June, we helped Tyler and Claire move into their new home. This is their first home that they have purchased. It is a new construction and is located in Ajax, not far from Ryan's parents. It is a very nice home and we enjoyed helping them move in, and can't wait to come again to see how they have started to make it a home. It was nice while we were in town we got to see some friends from university.

We celebrated the 4th with our niece Emily's arrival for a week. Emily visits us each summer for about a week. This year I got tickets to the Broadway show "High School Musical" and we went and saw that together on Thursday afternoon. We then went to Ryan's work and visited Ryan in his office building. We came home that night and ordered take out pizza to celebrate Emily's report card of all A's and B's.

The next day Emily and I went off to the vegetable farm where we picked some more strawberries, raspberries, and sweet peas. We then headed off to the beach for some swimming in the afternoon. Emily had requested that while she was here she wanted to visit the museum of "Natural History". So, that night we went to Cranbrook's Science museum where we got to see some planets through the observatory. We saw Saturn and its rings, and the planet Jupiter with its 4 moons. As well as some spear heads, fossils, and dinosaur stuff. Emily really enjoyed this.

The next day was little J.J.'s 5th birthday party. Emily got the chance to go "tube riding". She loved it, she went 7 times. She had no fear. J.J.'s party was really great. It was on the beach and Heidi did a great job organizing the games and the kids had a great time. We came home that night and had a camp fire and tired to find some constellations that we had learned about the previous night at the museum.

On Sunday, my sister Pam, Matthew and Jillian arrived for the rest of Emily's stay. It was great to spend some time with all of them. So much so that they are coming back tomorrow for a couple of more days. We spent our days enjoying the hot summer weather. Pam bought a pool for the kids and they enjoyed playing in it. We went shopping. They enjoyed the mailman. We had a good time together. Matthew enjoyed his time with "The boss", as he affectionately calls Ryan. This name is because Ryan is the boss of his house and Matthew has to do what he says when he visits. Here are some pics from their visit.

Yesterday I had a gastroscopy and a colonoscopy done for this nausea and vomiting history that I have had and I had good reports - everything looked fine. Phew! Now, that was not much fun preparing for the tests but it was worth the report in the end.

That is about all I have been up to - oh yeh, I have been working as well. I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer weather. Talk to you soon, Kelly