Mustard Flowers

The grapes vines and mustard flowers behind Preager Port Works in St. Helena, CA. This was one of the stops we made during a recent trip over the hills to Napa. Seriously good (but pricy) port and reisling, and a beautiful view from the road.
We toasted the deployment with a bottle of champagne that we bought later that same day from Mumm's in Napa, and I plan on getting another bottle (or two!) to toast Dom's return home in a few months!

Monterey, CA

Here's a picture from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the coolest aquariums I've been to! It's so enormous that we only made it through about half of it before Danny was completely exhausted. This is a shot of the three of us on the pier that surrounds the lower level. The waves crashing were a little scary for Danny, but he was so excited to see the seals and birds. Afterwards we had a fantastic lunch at El Torito on Cannery Row, and watched a pod of dolphins or whales in the bay from our table. (Amazing guacamole there as well :) ) We drove back from Monterey via the Pacific Coast Highway, which was absolutely gorgeous too!

King of the World!

Danny is taking his role as man of the house very seriously- today, he built himself a throne by placing his chair on top of the couch facing the TV...the ideal spot for watching The Wiggles!

One Picture A Day

Ok, folks. I know we've been exceptionally lazy bloggers for the last few months. Life has been hectic and the occasional picture uploaded to Facebook or sent via email is about all we could handle.
One of the many reasons for the crazy pace of our life was getting Dom ready for a deployment. While he's gone, I promised to upload one picture a day of what's going on back home. Some days it might be Danny, some days the dogs, sometimes something completely random. I'm going to do my best to stick to it.
Here goes nothing!

Today I am starting with a picture of Sandy. Both the dogs had surgery last week to remove tumors, and they have done so well in recovery! I am so proud of them. They are a little bit quieter this week, but other than that you'd never know they had operations. Sandy took the opportunity to try out a new chair near her favorite window. It's not as cushy as her preferred couch, but it has a much better view and plenty of sun!

Finally found the camera cord!!

Somewhere along our journey west, the cord which connects the camera to the computer disappeared...well, at long last, I found it yesterday and can now upload our pictures! Since the last month has mostly been spent surviving TLF and moving into the new house/making it livable, I will just post the highlights. After that, back to regular blogging!

Danny and the dogs hanging out in our Travis TLF.

Our day at the Sacramento Zoo!

Visiting our friend Megan in San Francisco!

We went down to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf for lunch and a little sightseeing. As you can see from my hair, it was a little windy-but a gorgeous sunny day otherwise!

We made it!

The last two days of the drive were pretty brutal, but we made it to California safe and sound last night. Wyoming went on forever, and was really very pretty in a desolate sort of way. It also had a completely random totem pole style statue of Abraham Lincoln on top of a mountain...
Utah is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. The mountains around Salt Lake City reminded me so much of the Alps and Park City was stunning. I think we'll have to go back for a vacation. We set off early yesterday, and by mid-morning had to stop for a flat tire. It happened at the perfect time, though, and we were able to get it patched and get back on the road...but between that and both Danny and Sandy not feeling well, the whole trip took about 13 hours.
We are settled into TLF, and got a chance to see our house today, so we are very excited to be here. Just a few more weeks on base, and then we will be settled permanently!
We miss everyone back east so much!

Colorado

After making it through the plains of Kansas (you really shouldn't be able to see that far in any direction-it's just creepy), we were so excited to get to Colorado Springs. It's beautiful, and we had a wonderful time staying with the Tessiers. Thanks for hosting the family circus!!!

On to Salt Lake City in the morning!!