Eiffel Tower

I bought this paper specifically for these pages... So glad they turned out so cute!

Notre Dame

Lions and Tigers and Gargoyles, oh my!

Sainte-Chapelle

I'm still amazed by the stained glass windows at Sainte-Chapelle.  They were truly one of the most beautiful things we saw on our entire trip.

Arc de Triomphe

From our first morning and our trip to the Arc de Triomphe.

Back to the Scrapbooking

Loving how the pages from Europe are turning out!  This is the last page from the our first two days in Madrid.

Her Eyes

Amazing how eyes belonging to someone so young can be so expressive.

Life always looks better through a cute pair of sunglasses!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!  A special Valentine's shout out to my Valentine! Love you!

As spotted on the bar at Rippy's! Go Vandy!!!

Palacio Real

From our day at Spain's royal palace.

El Centro

From our first day walking around Madrid and fighting off severe jet lag!

Europe Scrapbooking!

So the scrapbooking drive is back... So excited to start scrapbooking our Europe trip! I started with a two page layout from our Bullfighting experience. Enjoy!

Out with the Old...

In with the new!  About a month ago, I was in Chicago with Darren and we went looking at new cars.  My old car, "baby car," had been my baby since I was 18 and was slowly dying.  I was starting to get worried driving it far distances and knew it was time to send her back to my parents.  Our first and actually our last stop, was the Ford dealership.  I had been talking about looking at the Fusions and they just happened to have a very marked down 2010 Sport edition with my name written all over it!

Saying goodbye as my dad drives baby car away.

And hello to sporty car!

Jelly Belly

Our last touristy stop of the trip was to the Jelly Belly factory.  It was a pretty interesting tour seeing the process to make the tasty treats and seeing the millions of finished jelly beans.

They took these pictures of us in our hats posing with Mr. Jelly Bean.

My favorite is still the Buttered Popcorn flavor!

Wine Tasting - Day 2

On our second day of wine tasting, I definitely took it easy comparably.  We only had plans to go to two places, the first, at Liz's suggestion, being the Castello di Amorosa.

The castle was built by Dario Sattui to be an authentic Italian castles.  Of its 107 rooms, there is a moat, drawbridge, torture chamber and a church.

The interior courtyard of the castle.

The wine storage.

An Iron Maiden.

The castle guard.

Wine Tasting - Day 1

After our jaunt out to Tahoe, Darren and I set out on our own adventure up to Napa for a couple days of relaxing.  Too bad we were so busy wine tasting and eating, we didn't get that much relaxing done though!

We started off the day at Domaine Chandon tasting their sparkling wines.  While we were there, we were directed towards Jessup Cellars.  Of all the wines we tasted during our trip to Napa, these were our favorite. The wine tasting was the fanciest of the 8 tastings we did as well as being free!  This started the downhill trek towards me having far too much to drink on our first day since they let us taste 9 wines!!

Following Jessup, we headed to Jarvis, a winery I had been to before.  It is the only winery in Napa where once the grapes are picked from the vines, they do not leave the cave until they are ready to be sold.  So the whole process of mashing the grapes, making the wine, aging the wine and then bottling the wine is all done inside this cave.

The process starts in these huge casks.

The cave had its own waterfall fed by a spring.

The Jarvis' family collects large crystals many of them Amethyst.  What you can't tell in the scale of this picture is those larger crystals are as tall as I am!

The barrels of wine.  Each barrel holds about 300 bottles of wine.

After leaving Jarvis, we headed to O'Brien Estate Winery.  Their wines all had a neat theme based on the romance of the owners of the winery.  While we were there, we actually met the owner, Bart.

From this point the rest of the afternoon gets funny. Because I think around this time, I took this picture.

I know the last two winery's we went to were Trefethen and Hill. I remember enjoying many of the wines because we bought 5 bottles, so I'm eager to try them again.

After sobering up, we ended the night with dinner at Bottega, Michael Chiarello's restaurant.  In one word, the food was absolutely amazing.  Definitely in the top 5 restaurants I've eaten at.  

Cheering Squad

Sunday morning we again had to wake up early, this time for the Bears game that started at 10 am on the west coast!

Part of our cheering squad.