birthday road trip

My husband surprised me this weekend and told me to have my bags packed.

We left at 1:00 on Friday.

He was very secretive.

And was throwing out curve balls to keep me guessing.

Our destination turned out to be one of my most favorite places ever.

The last time we were here, was 11 years ago, for a special birthday of his.

In case you're wondering it's the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito.

They so sweetly put your name on the front of your cottage.

Last time, they also put our dog's name with a care package for her.

I loved that.

And adore the understated coziness.

This is where Jack and Jackie Kennedy spent their honeymoon.

It's simple, and charming, with hiking trails all around.

It felt like we were a world away.

Saturday we went on a wine tasting tour in Santa Ynez,

complete with a beautiful picnic lunch.

I was pretending I was in the South of France.

with miles and miles of this everywhere you turned.

The trip was wonderful..and of course all too fast.

But our son left today for a week long camping trip with friends from church, 

some he has known since preschool.  

They'll be in the mountains, having fun and worshipping Jesus.

And he'll come home filthy..and that's ok.

But we both wanted to make it back to give him a big hug before he departed.

He thought we weren't, so we surprised him.  

And you know what, I could tell it made his day.

He's growing up too fast I tell you.

And now, now we have a girls week ahead.

It's a completely different energy here without our son.

It's weird, and feels like something is missing.

But it's also kind of nice for the girls to just do girl-ish things.

And I have a post coming about my 40th bday and the 40 acts of kindness inspired by this lady.

I tried to get it put together that night.

But do you know I crashed my iphoto program trying to off load pictures from my phone.

The tech support guy told my husband he's never seen anyone with that many

images stored on their iphoto.

It's time to do some serious offloading.

And printing and finally putting these pictures into books.

The scare I just had of potentially losing them.

It was a serious wake up call.

After 11 hours of backing up it appears to be ok.

And soon, soon I want to write all about the birthday adventure of kindness.