Life of a Vet's wife

Well, I got my first taste of being a veterinarian's wife this weekend.  Henderson is on call this weekend through Friday; yesterday, we decided to run to Walmart and grab a few random items we needed.  We're finishing up and HK gets a phone call.  We literally put our shopping basket down and head out!  Today, he's been gone all day on various emergencies.  I'm so glad that Henderson is so passionate about his work!  I don't know how someone could work this much and study this much to do something that they didn't love.

Well, besides our boring weekend, we've been setting up house and cooking a lot!  I hope to get pictures up of our new home soon; I just need to keep the entire house clean for more than a couple of minutes!  It seems like if the kitchen is clean, our bedroom is a mess.  If the living room is clean, the kitchen is dirty.  Can't stay caught up!

The dogs are loving it here.  Every night after dinner, we take them outside and play for about 30 minutes.  It's nice to get outside for just a few every evening.  We do have to wait until the sun is completely down, though, ha!

I've been pretty much living off of Pioneer Woman's new cookbook!  We've made her crash hot potatoes, Spicy Lemon Garlic Shrimp, potatoes au gratin, and herb roasted pork tenderloin!  I've noticed that her cookbook recipes have slight variations from the ones online.  Paula Deen's been getting some love, too, by way of her peaches and cream pie (which I hated; HK thought it was ok) and blackberry cobbler (these recipes I couldn't find online.  Her cooking bible is worth the investment!  It has lots of great recipes for people, like me, who want to learn to cook tried and true Southern recipes.  These recipes are ones your mama and grandmother cook).  I have over 20 cookbooks that haven't gotten a lot of use in the last 2 years, so I'm trying to make up for it!

Well, that's all for now.  Stay tuned for more pictures from the honeymoon!

Honeymooners!! (part 3)

Tuesday morning, we woke up bright and early for our hot air balloon ride!  We had to be at the meeting spot at 5:30 am, but we were so excited that it wasn't that hard to get up.  And I think our bodies were still one central time, so they thought it was 7:30!

 I was looking rough, but so flipping excited!!

 Henderson had to sign our lives away.  After this point, they gathered us all up and told us who our pilots would be.  They also said that the balloons were FAA regulated aircrafts (who knew?) and that because the fog was so thick that morning we wouldn't be able to fly over Napa Valley!  We were pretty bummed, but we still went along with them to the Sacramento River Valley, which was about 45 minutes away.  We didn't get the views of wine country, but it was still absolutely breathtaking and worth every penny!!

 This is one of the balloons going up.  These are the largest balloons and baskets in the country.  Our balloon had 20 passengers plus the pilot in it, so they were pretty hefty!  

 Another balloon going up

 The inside of our balloon

 Sooo excited!!!

 This is how our pilot "steered."  We had to go with the wind, but he was able to move us up and down with different bursts of propane.

 Beautiful views!

 We were up in the air about an hour.  It was very smooth riding.  I never got nervous or scared about being up so high.  In fact, on the form we had to sign, we had to verify that we weren't afraid of heights!  When it came time to landing, I did get a little nervous.  One of the other passengers asked our pilot if he had ever wrecked while landing - his response: "The wind made us wreck a couple of times!"  We had a tough time finding a landing spot because of the wind, but our pilot finally found one.  Some of the workers for the balloon company met us over there.  It was a good thing, because we had a pretty rough landing.  The workers were able to hold up our basket to keep us from falling over.

After we landed, we headed back to the hotel we all met at and had a celebratory champagne brunch.  There were three other couples at our table with us and two of them were honeymooning as well!  One of them was from Virginia and the other from Wisconsin - each of them said their weddings actually had temperatures higher than ours!  It made me feel a lot better about the heat at our wedding!

 We headed back to the Inn and got ready for another day sightseeing!  We decided to do a picnic at a winery, so we headed to Oxbow public market to find some picnic food.  We were thinking they'd have club sandwiches, pimento and cheese, etc.  We were wrong.  

 They had lots of great cheeses!  

 Henderson got a roast beef sandwich from this vendor...

 And I got a shrimp taco from this vendor, along with some chips and guacamole!  

 Waiting for my tacos.

 We headed back towards St. Helena - they have several wineries with beautiful views.  We found one we liked, Rutherford Winery, and did a tasting and bought one of their bottles.  This is the picnic backpack the Inn supplied us with.  It was perfect!  It had plates, napkins, silverware, a corkscrew, and wine glasses!

 Our delicious lunch!

 Another ring shot

 Rutherford Hill - where we picnicked.

 We had a little over an hour to kill, so we just road around looking at the beautiful countryside.  We even found a national park to look around in.  Unfortunately, I fell asleep during the park visit!  I can't help it - you put me in a car, I'm going to sleep!

 Next up was our coffee tasting at Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Company.  When I saw this option on the list of activities the innkeepers supplied us with, I knew Henderson would love it!  And I was right!

 He was so pumped!!

 We each got one of these trays.  Each glass had coffee from a different region.  

 We smelled, and then did a cupping with each of the different coffees.  We got to pick our favorite of those three, and say what specifically we liked about them.  Then we played around with a few different brews until we came up with King's Brew.  Now, if we want any more of it, we just have to call and order another bag!  Pretty neat!

 That's the roaster behind us - they actually roast their own coffee there!

I was so surprised by how hot it was!  We were so excited to be going to a cooler climate, but we didn't get what we expected!

 For dinner that night, we headed to Grace's Table in downtown Napa

  I ordered some sort of chicken and Henderson had the Southern Country boil.  :)

 Enjoying another delicious dinner

 In our going away basket with all of the food from the wedding, we had a lot of cake!  We couldn't eat it all Saturday night and our stomachs were still too nervous Sunday, so we decided to take it to California!  When we got to the security at the airport, Henderson asked if we could take it on.  The security guard said, "No, you can't take wedding cake on.  I'm going to have to confiscate it and test it!"  Luckily he was only kidding, and we got to take our cake to Cali.  Tuesday night was the first time we weren't too full to eat any.  It was kind of funny how our cake made it's cross-country trip!

Honeymooners!! (part 2)

 Monday morning, we were up pretty early since our bodies were still on Central time!  We headed downstairs to grab some breakfast.  We had read on trip advisor all about the delicious breakfasts that the Inn on First is known for.  Monday's breakfast was a chili relleno with soy sausage...as in vegetarian.  We all know that Henderson and I are meat and potatoes type people, but we did eat all of our breakfast.  It was ok, but probably not something we'll be cooking up anytime soon!

 Next, we had to make a run to Target.  I had left my memory card for my big camera at home, so I needed to buy another.  Afterwards, I had to get a picture of my cute chauffuer and our awesome rental car!

 A nice man was in his car waiting on his wife and he offered to take a picture of the two of us together!  It was so sweet, since I knew it was going to be hard to get pictures of the two of us together on this trip.

 We then headed to St. Helena to grab some lunch and head to our tour of Beringer.  We got to see these amazing views on our way - pictures do not do it justice!

 Olive tree

 On our way into St. Helena, we found this cute little roadside diner.  It was absolutely delicious!  They're known for their gourmet sandwiches and milkshakes.

 Henderson had the ahi tuna burger, and I had the fish tacos.  We split an order of my favorite - sweet potato fries!

 Ahh, I'm dreaming about this food right now!  The fries were so good, we stopped by the next afternoon and got an order with a couple of milkshakes.  :)

 Next up, was a tour and tasting at Beringer.  Since we drink this wine at home, I thought it would be neat to go and see where exactly it's made.  The Beringer winery is the oldest winery in St. Helena; the Beringer brothers came from Germany so they already knew how to make good wine!

 Had to take a picture of this since it had Mimi's name on it!

 I got lots of ring shots during this trip!  This one is of Henderson's other wedding band.

 The "Magnum" bottle - it's in the Guinness World Records as the largest bottle of wine ever produced.

 We got to taste wine right out of the barrel.

 My lips were red the whole week!

 in the caves

 Next, was a tour of the grapes.  We learned that the more stressed the grapes are, the better the wine!

 Finally, my favorite part: tasting!

 Henderson was trying to show off his photography skills!

 I love him.

 There were some beautiful stained glass windows in the house!

 After the tour, we headed to downtown St. Helena to do a little shopping.  We stopped by this chocolate store, several gift shops, and an olive oil company.  We stayed in town for about an hour and a half.  We loved that little town - so much that we went back the next day!

 On our way home, we stopped by Heitz Wine Cellars.  This winery had a 99 point wine!  We even got to try it because a VIP had come in and wanted a tasting.  It was absolutely delicious, but at $200 a pop, we decided to buy a couple of different bottles!

 The view from Heitz

 Next, we stopped at Peju.  This was our favorite winery.  We got to taste 7 different wines here, each one better than the last.

 After Peju, we headed back to the room to get a little rest.  Using recommendations from the innkeepers, we decided to eat at Celadon for dinner.  We walked downtown to this place where I had an Hawaiian fish (I don't remember the name) and Henderson had the lamb!

The food in Napa did not disappoint.  And with that, our first full day in Napa was over.  Keep a lookout for a post on our high flying adventure Tuesday!