Jillian's Science Fair

When we got the announcement about Jillian's science fair - Jillian knew just what she would do!  The project for the pre-k kids is to bring in a collection.  What better collection to bring for Jillian than her pressed pennies?

Jillian also answered a few questions about her pennies and we typed them up.  Then she picked all sorts of funny animal pictures to dress it up.  She couldn't have been more proud!

Final Zoo School Monday

Another page in this chapter is coming to a close.  Jillian had her last day of zoo school, which included a family hike and we also got to go into their class to see an animal visitor.  She had such a fun year with her teacher, Miss Holly and learning all about the animals.  I am so glad we were able to have this be a part of her last year of preschool.

Posing with Miss Holly, who has inspired Jillian to want to be a zoo school teacher when she grows up.  

We, of course, used the time after zoo school to do our favorite things!

Lunch next to Salty the crocodile - we ate here every Monday.  

Posing on the Tortoise before going around to see some animals. 

Lately, her first desired stop is going to go see Miss Holly - after she is done with Jillian's class, she works at the Nature Traders store.  Jillian loves to go in to see Miss Holly, check out the stuff that you can trade, and then we go into the learning room, where we sit down to read books together. In order to get here, though, we do always make sure to take a ride in the stage coach (aka princess carriage that takes us to the ball), sing "Five Fat Turkeys are We" as we pass the turkeys, jump on the swinging bridge and say hi to the otters. 

A ride on the train (and of course the carousel, too, where we as always took the carriage and pretended to throw carrots and apples to the horses in front of us to make them go faster!)

Visiting Mustard and Senley

Checking out Bowie and Belle - the baby Elephants!

Oh, and of course....we all knew this one was coming! 

Mother's Day 2014

This Mother's Day, I got a 2 day long celebration!  We started it off with a family night out in Fort Worth.

First up, we went to see the Cattle Drive and then walk around the Stockyards for a bit.

Then we headed to the Watergardens to explore a bit.

It was definitely hot enough to dip our toes in!   Then we headed to my favorite restaurant, La Familia for the best Mexican food and followed that up with Sweet Sammies for dessert.  No one was left hungry!

On Sunday, we celebrated with Bubbie for lunch and then headed to Gigi's for dinner and the first swim of the season!

I think they were a little excited to try out the pool! I am going to give it a little while longer before I dive in!

#happyinnapa

Way back last fall, I got a text from a friend asking if I wanted to go visit our other friend (also named Krista) who had just moved to San Fran.  After thinking that over for about 2.5 seconds (well and after getting budget approval from Neal, of course) I was all in! So, there were months of planning that went into getting 15 girls schedules to work out to take a trip to Napa.  The friend who started all of this, Gara, is a master travel planner, so she had even the smallest details worked out - down to swag bags awaiting us arrival! It was awesome!  

After arriving at the airport on Thursday, several of us took our rental cars to do a little sightseeing in San Fran before heading into Napa.  First stop for my car was the Full House house - a special request from one of the girls in my car, but let's be honest....all of us were excited to go!  We also drove down Lombard Street and then we met up with the other San Fran car for dinner.  After some yummy pizza, we walked around the water before heading back to our cars and driving out to Napa.

Me and Khrystal trying to get a picture with the Golden Gate bridge in the back.  Not the easiest challenge from where we were!

But the view was absolutely beautiful!

Our first full day in Napa was our wine tasting tour.  We had a private bus with a fun driver that took us to all the stops and also acted as our photographer so we could get all 15 girls in all the shots!

This was our beautiful house in Napa -as great as this place looks from the outside (complete with grapevines in the front yard) the inside was 1,000 times nicer.  

A group shot on our patio at the beautiful house we rented for the weekend

Our first stop was at Envy - this one was very laid back and probably had my favorite wine of the day

This was taken at Frog's Leap - it was so pretty on the grounds here.  After this stop we went to Honig Vineyards where we also had a fabulous picnic lunch.

The crowd favorite winery - Silver Oak

Our final stop - Domaine.   We sat out on the patio here and had a great time.  After leaving Domaine, we headed back to our house and we actually had a private chef come out to fix us dinner!  I felt so glamorous.  The rest of the night was spent talking, playing some games, and staying up way too late.

Day 2 was a kind of "choose your own adventure" day.  About half the group went to a spa for mud baths.  The other half of us opted to do sightseeing around Napa (and after hearing about the very "interesting" time the spa-goers had, I was super happy with my decision!

Khrystal and I even had time for a few runs - so much more pleasant with the cool breeze and the beautiful scenery!  We even took a little bit of a detour and ran through the Beringer vineyards before getting asked to leave! After our run, we went with a few girls to a breakfast place a few towns over before going to the main Napa area.

We were able to walk into the "downtown" Napa area and do a little shopping and stopped at Gott's for some really yummy burgers.

That night, we all met back up for dinner but first went to Robert Mondavi.

The Mondavi group

Me with Jennifer

These grounds were absolutely beautiful!

Time for dinner!  We went to Cindy's and had a fun server that took great care of us.

Our personalized menu of yumminess

Me with Anna and Lisa - these two ladies have been a part of my accountability group for the past year or more.  Such a blessing to get to have them in my life.

Jamie, Khrystal and myself - we were technically "roomies" on the trip.

I had to take a picture with this dessert. The.best.thing.ever.  It is called campfire pie.  I would go back to Napa right now just for another piece!

After dinner, we went out for a little more fun - here I am with the girl that we all came out to see, Krista!

The next morning was the end of our trip - we all had to head back to the airport.  A few of us had a later flight than the rest, so we were able to have a little bit of a leisurely morning, including an amazing breakfast before driving into San Fran.  We made sure to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped to check it out while we were there.

Pretty foggy, but it was there!

We finished it up with this fun jumping pic.  These girls were a blast!