Hot air ballooning in Wine Country

We headed up to Napa + Sonoma for Jenny's birthday weekend! We arose at 5.30am to take a hot air balloon ride down Napa Valley - courtesy of an amazing wedding present from Sarah + Nicola!

From 2009-02 Napa

Inflating our balloon

From 2009-02 Napa

Jenny climbs in!

From 2009-02 Napa

Liftoff - after we climb in it...er..well, we start to float :) These guys are pulling it away from those trees.

From 2009-02 Napa

Shadow of our balloon over vineyards and workers pruning the vines.

From 2009-02 Napa

Little would you know that we're floating 1000 feet in the air!

From 2009-02 Napa

The view down the valley

From 2009-02 Napa

Vineyards

From 2009-02 Napa

Our chase - these guys follow the balloon and watch where we land. They fold up the balloon and take us back to base.

From 2009-02 Napa

Back on solid ground: Deflation

From 2009-02 Napa

Keeping the balloon off the vines

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Like getting a sleeping bag into its cover. Only harder.

From 2009-02 Napa

Loads more photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/padday/200902Napa#

Woof Woof! Meet Toby!

First night in my new home:

From 2009-02 Toby

Traveling on the tram to Ocean Beach:

From 2009-02 Toby

From 2009-02 Toby

From 2009-02 Toby

In the dog park beside our house:

From 2009-02 Toby

Another trip to Tahoe

Almost settling into a routine of heading up to Tahoe at this stage. Went up again last weekend, had a great time as the cabin was full and we all went boarding together (Jenny on far right):

From 2009-02 Tahoe

We went dancing in a dodgy bar:

From 2009-02 Tahoe

And played some late night Bingo:

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Remarkably, Jenny won the first game and I won the second, so the Adams family walked away with all the wonga.

Doggy adoptions

We're carefully thinking about getting a dog, so went along to some doggy adoptions today.

Nope, not thinking about this one, despite the cuteness. He was slightly deranged.

Lazy San Francisco weekend

This weekend we chilled in the city. We drank coffee:

From 2009-01 San Francisco

and wandered around:

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Snowed In!

Last weekend we were up in Tahoe.
The good news: carving fresh tracks in 2 feet of powder!
The bad news: we got snowed in :-/

Powder

From 2009-01 Tahoe weekend 2

From 2009-01 Tahoe weekend 2

Here's a video of me rambling about the amount of powder:

From 2009-01 Tahoe weekend 2

Snowed in
We then couldn't leave because the car was skidding all over the road.

From 2009-01 Tahoe weekend 2

We ended up driving back on Monday morning, leaving at 4.30am with snow chains. Grim journey involving 10mph speeds and removing snow chains in -14 degrees. That's very very very very cold. At least Jenny had an evening in the hot tub!

From 2009-01 Tahoe weekend 2