Bridal Shower

I can't believe that it is already April 23rd?! How is the year going by so quickly? One thing that I am very excited about it that summer is on the way, I can feel it! This weekend the temperature was in the high eighties if not the nineties! So lets start at the beginning. I had to work a long 5 days this week. After work on Friday the girls and I decided we needed to relax a little and bring in the weekend the right way. We headed over to Jacksons. I had never been there before so I was excited to see what it was all about. We all got some drinks and some food and just enjoyed hanging out with each other. I must say that when it came time to head home it was a pretty nice feeling knowing my drive home was a mere 15 minutes.

Saturday was my friend Chelsies bridal shower. Now I have to admit that I was a little nervous going into it not knowing anyone, but everyone was very friendly and it went great. I left the house around 10:30 so I could meet Chelsie at her house around 11:30. Driving into Calistoga was bitter sweet, I miss it more then I thought I would. When I got to her house her and her friend Laura were finishing getting ready and once they were done it was off to St.Helena for the shower! Her friends house was beautiful! My idea of the perfect home, her backyard backs up to a vineyard! We all enjoyed some champange, food and Chelsie opening her many gifts. It was so much fun to watch all the expressions on Chelsies face while she opened each gift. I am so excited and happy for her and Jason! Here are a few pictures I took from the shower.

Gorgeous set up!

Each little bag had wild flower seeds

The gifts, It ended up being so warm outside we had to open them inside

Look at that view!

Cupcakes made by Jasons sister

Chelsie and her Momma

Glad she was excited about the toaster I got her

Chelsie and her twin sisters

The group

Happy Birthday to ME!

Well my birthday has come and gone. It wasn't the most exciting birthday I've had but I sure felt the love from all my friends and family! Even though I was stuck at work most of the day it made it exciting getting flowers and chocolates sent to me! Thank you everyone for all the birthday wishes!

My day in pictures:

Chocolate covered strawberries sent to my work. Yum!

Cupcake flowers sent to my work (From Tiff, Devin and Brodie)

At Jack and Tonys for dinner!

My awesome in-laws!

Cheesecake

Add-a-leaf springs for my truck, no more pre-runner

My new lens from my hubby :)

Vitamin D

 

How awesome is it that on Thursday I was playing in the snow and today I was soaking up the rays!? After hearing that the weather was going to be nice and sunny this weekend Cindy and I decided to head over to Coppolas to enjoy the pool. First let me tell you that it has changed since I have gone with my mom. You can no longer pay $15 to get a lounge chair. You can pay $20 to have the option to lay on the cement on the grass or you can pay up to $133 to get a cabine with enough towels for 4 people, water bottles and a complimentary wine tasting. I don't like this change, I think that the cabines are useless. Anyways I had to show off some of my gorgeous pictures from today.Thanks to my awesome mother in law for this birthday treat!!

Im gonna make it

Hello my dear blogger friends. It has been quite some time since I have had the time for blogging. But on this beautiful sunny Saturday morning, here I am. Let me start by saying it has been a rough couple of weeks. As you know Zac and I are in the process of moving. I hate moving. We were able to move most of our things last weekend and spent our first couple of night here. I must admit it is taking some time for me to get used to the new living arrangements. Thankfully I have a great husband to take care of me. Lately Nick (Zacs younger brother) and I have been doing P90X. I know I don't need to work out to loose weight but I'd like to stay healthy and if we do go backpacking this summer I would like to be able to make it a little easier on myself.

This last work week was really rough on me. I was already had a lot of emotions for the move and then to add on all the meaningless drama from work, yuck. Sometimes I just need to remind myself that its just a job. In the scheme of things its just a little blip on the radar screen. At least thats how I feel about it. I feel that a job is just to pay for the things I want to do in life. It helps if you like what you do, which I do! Sometimes the drama gets the best of me.

Lets move forward to Thursday. After a tough few days at work Manny and I were able to take Thursday off and we decided it would be a perfect day to head up the the snow and get away! So up to sierra we went! We left for Tahoe at about 5:30, stopped at our new breakfast place, Buttercup Pantry and headed up the mountain.

I can't tell you how nice it was to be able to take a break from reality and head up to the mountains and just relax! It was much needed. I had to work on Friday so it was nice to come back to work fully refreshed. Friday actually went really smooth and for dinner Zac and I were able to head over the hill to Calistoga to enjoy dinner with our friends Jason and Chelsie.

Zac left for work this morning and my sweet boy Hudson let me sleep in till 8:30! Im really excited about that. Now he is fast asleep behind the couch and I am enjoying some relaxing, watching TV and surfing the web. Later today I have to let the cat our ( Leo). Im worried Im going to let him outside and I will never see him again :( I guess your suppose to keep him in the house for about 3 weeks before you let them out. We'll see how this goes. And for tonight, my friends from work are taking me out for a pre-birthday dinner. Yup, my birthday is coming up, this Tuesday to be exact. Im going to be the big 26! Im not to excited about it this year just because there are so many other things going on right now. But I will make the best of it. Speaking of making the best of things, I hear tomorrow is suppose to be 70 degrees! So Cindy and I are going to hit up Coppola's pool! I am very excited about that. Nothing like getting a little sun! Well I think thats enough updating for now. Hope you all have a great weekend!

My house is naked.

Its true, my house looks naked. I guess I should start at the beginning. A week ago Zac and I were throwing around the idea of moving in with his youngest brother Nick. Nick owns his own house in Windsor and has recently become room mate-less. We thought about all the pros and the cons and there are really to many good things to pass up this opportunity. First, as you know Zac and I have been wanting to get into our own house. We pay so much in rent here in Calistoga so moving in with Nick would save us a lot of money. Second, its nice that Hudson won't be all alone and when Zac is gone for work I won't be all alone. Third, we are over in Santa Rosa all the time anyways so it will be so much more convenient to be on that side of the hill. I could go on and on and on. The main con with this move is that Zac and I are loosing "our own place" and having to store a lot of our things. When it comes down to it though we got to do what we got to do. This won't be permanent. I must admit I thought I was going to do okay packing up my stuff until I started putting away all my pictures, I don't know why but it hit me. Today we actually moved a lot of our things to a storage unit and it wasn't bad at all.

Anyways, yesterday we spent all day at Nicks house helping him paint one of his old room mates rooms. For some strange she felt the need to paint the room pepto bismal pink, no joke. It took about 4 coats of primer before the bright pink was barely there! Note to self, never ever paint a room bright pink.The picture below
does not even do it justice. Its so strange that I am moving yet again. I hate moving and the sad thing is that I
actually don't want to move. In the past Zac and I have found bigger and better houses but the house that we

are in now I am perfectly content with. Its a really cute house in a good area. I love the fact that I can hop on my bike and ride into town and meet our friends Chelsie and Jason for dinner. Its definitely going to take some getting used to moving to Windsor but I am excited for whats to come.

I'll let you know how the rest of the move goes. We really don't want to drag this out and if we can be all settled by next weekend. I'll be sure to take some pictures of our new room. Nick was nice enough to give us the master bedroom and the pink room. I know that even though its not my house it will be very important to make the space (my room) feel like its mine.

Besides all the change that is going to be coming my way I must say I am very excited about the future and what life has in store for me. I can't believe that summer is right around the corner. I can't wait! I feel like Zac and I already have a full schedule! We have a family trip to Angels Camp, a camping trip with friends, Jason and Chelsies wedding, Palm Springs family trip, hopefully a trip down south to see our dear friends Janelle and Dylan, a backpacking trip and who knows what else!

Well thats about it for now. Let me just say that I am so thankful to have such a wonderful husband that takes such great care of me. In my eyes Zac and I have the perfect relationship and I think that most other couples in this world have what we have but thats not true. I am reminded more often then I like that unhealthy  relationships can take a toll on both parties. However, this just reminds me to cherish what I have. Zac and I are so lucky to have some of the best examples in the world, our parents!

Shreddin

Its been about 10 years since the last time that I've been snow boarding. And I have only been a few times! I was so excited when Zac said we needed to plan to go up to the snow. We have had really strange weather for the last couple of months and practically no snow in the mountains. However, when it rained for about a week straight we thought that we better take our chance to head up to the snow before our short winter season was over!

I had asked my friend Manny from work if him and his wife would like to come with us. Manny had been once before and his wife Yoli had never been. I thought this would be perfect because I have not been in such a long time that I would be re-learning everything. Thankfully we had Zac with us who is a great snow boarder. We kept checking the weather and it was going all over the place, one day snow then rain, then wind. I was a little concerned that we would have bad weather while we were there. No one wants to get rained on while they are snow boarding.




Saturday morning arrived and Zac and I were up by 4:00am to head over to Santa Rosa. We dropped off Hudson and the grandparents house so he wouldn't be locked up all day. We met Manny and Yoli at Zacs parents and we were on the road a little after 5:00am. It was already raining on our drive but once we made it to Placerville the rain was no where to been seen. We stopped for some breakfast at a delicious little restaurant called Buttercup Cafe, yum! Once our bellies were full we headed back up the mountain. We got to Sierra at about 9:00 in the morning, we made great time! We got all our gear ready in the parking lot and off we went, first stop, the bunny slopes so that we could all catch our barrings ( except for Zac). Once I made it off the chair lift without falling I had high hopes. Its like riding a bike....right? I clipped my boots into my bindings and off I went! I was actually surprised at how well I did. I had a rush of excitement like....hey I can do this! Once I got down to the bottom it was back one more time before I wanted to head off to the bigger slopes. Manny and Yoli hung around the bunny slopes most of the day because it was Yolis first time. Zac was nice enough to hang out with me even though he is a much better boarder then I am. We had such and awesome time!

It was already near lunch time so we all met up at the lodge and took a little break. We all decided that we wanted to eat lunch at the top of the mountain and then we would all snowboard down together. The weather was perfect! Nice and sunny, almost a little to warm for my jacket. The snow wasn't the best but Im not a avid snow boarder so it didn't bother me. It was so nice to enjoy lunch at the top of the mountain with such and awesome view! After eating and making it down the mountain it was already 3:30. The lifts close at 4:00 so we thought we would end our day and head back to the truck. We were all tired! And boy am I feeling it today, I am SO sore! It was so worth it though, I had an awesome time.

Three Girls

The Ekblad girls re-united! I always love when I can get together with my family. My mom and sister were able to make a quick trip up to visit me last weekend. I already had some ideas of what I wanted to do but nothing really set in stone. I knew that I wanted to take some pictures while they were here. Im no professional and I still have so much to learn, but I really enjoy taking pictures and trying out new things. I was so excited when my sister said she would be happy to let me take some pictures. Check out some of my shots Here .

We started off our Friday taking some pictures of at the Bale Grist Mill in Calistoga. They were not open but we made it work. Next we headed over to St.Helena, Jen wanted to pick up some Macaroon cookies at one of her favorite places, The Model Bakery. My mom wanted to get my dad some chocolate to take back to him. While we were walking around we headed into the shop Olivier. I had always walked by but never felt the need to go in. Well I am so happy that I went in because everything is so delicious! You can try different olive oils, dips tapanades, you name it you can try it! My momma bought me some artichoke spinach dip, yummy! After trying all that yummy food, we decided we were hungry. I had the idea to head over to Dean and Deluca, grab something to eat and then cross the street to V.Sattui.

After finishing at V.Sattui I wanted to head over to Sullivan Vineyard. I had seen some pictures of the winery and knew it was close by so I thought it might be a cool location to get a few more pictures. When we got there we found someone and he asked if we had a reservation....oopsies. Luckily there was no one else there and he happily said he would do our tasting. We were able to sit outside and chat and enjoy our wine. It was so cool to be a winery where one of the owner just sits down with you and talks to you while he pours, felt like we were in our own backyard. The weather was awesome! Im glad that we were able to spend time outside on Friday because it was the nicest weather of the weekend.  By that time it was already later in the afternoon so we thought we would head back home to relax a bit and then get ready for dinner at Barolo.

 

Saturday we were able to really sleep in. Once we finally got going Jen and mom wanted to head into Calistoga because last time my mom was up we found this cool little thrift store and my mom wanted to show my sister.  Right when we walked up to the store we were surprised with a little English bulldog. My sister was so so excited to meet little Matilda. For those of you who don't know my sister and her husband had an English bulldog for about 4 years and about two Christmas's ago they had to put him to sleep. It was a great start to our day being able to see my sister so happy to see that Bully.

Once we were done in Calistoga we headed over the hill to pick up Zac and to have one more day of pictures. We headed over to rail road square in Santa Rosa and I got some really great shots with a brick background and a blue door! I get so excited when I get to look through my pictures and think about how I can edit them and what would look best. After having a late breakfast we wanted a snack before we had dinner. Jen had requested dinner at Tex Wasabi. So before heading to Tex I decided that we would go over to Healdburg and I would show mom and Jen Vin Couture, a wine lounge. We spent a good hour there enjoying some cheesecake and wine! When we were done we walked around the square in Healdsburg and then headed back over to Rosa to eat!

Already Sunday, our last day together. The rain had finally come. We thought it would be the perfect day to see a movie. So we saw a movie, spent some time in Barnes and Noble and then headed back to Calistoga to cook dinner. Always so much fun having them here! I really appreciate them making the long drive up here to see me. Love you guys! Can't wait till next time.