Happy Almost Birthday LuLu!

As hard as it is for me to grasp & accept, my little boy will be a year old in a few days

& all I can think about is how fast the past year has flown by. Everyone warned me, saying, "the second you have a baby, time flies by faster than ever before." I'm only now beginning to realize & understand what it is they meant. Well, I'll leave all my sappy blubbering for the big day, and today I'll share with you a few things Luca will be unwrapping on his special day!

{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}

I hope you all enjoy the last of your weekend! Usually I'd be disappointed, but this week has so many festivities packed into it, I can hardly keep my composure!

Wishing you all a relaxing Sunday & a relatively easy Monday!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! We had a wonderful Easter Eve painting and decorating easter eggs, hanging with Luca's Auntie Em, meeting her puppy Charlie whom Luca felt both curious and totally terrified of, and eating a delicious homemade lunch and then indulging in snacks upon snacks upon snacks while we died the eggs (I'm still stuffed). We wandered around Emily's gorgeous yard, a botanical garden which feels as though it was ripped right out of a storybook. We stared in awe at a massive beehive that was nestled in a large palm tree and wondered how big the queen must be. I was more focused on how often the fellow bees fly down to linger as I am just about as terrified of bees as Luca was of Charlie. We both survived thankfully unscathed and unstung.

I regress. Luca is officially on the move. He hasn't quite mastered the full hands and knees crawl quite yet but he definitely has down what I like to call "the trench crawl" where he looks like he's crawling through swamp bushes or under barbed wire. And when I say mastered, I mean he's swift, he's got the turbo switch on, no hybrid here.

On a final note: Thank you mother earth for the beautiful weather we've been having! It makes being apart from Encinitas a little more bearable...Not to mention my patience level has rapidly been recovering [Heat=me aggro] and I know with my patience levels evened out the world is simply a better place, just ask my husband. Happy wife, Happy Life.

Luca didn't get to meet the Easter bunny, but Charlie could probably pass as one with all that luscious white fur--and I'm pretty sure had we taken Luca's photo with the easter bunny Luca's facial expression would have been exactly the same as in the photo below...

A joyous and Happy Easter from my family to yours.
 I wish you tons of happiness, candy, and cage-free hardboiled eggs to indulge in.
Who else is ready for day after easter egg salad sandwiches?!
raised hand waving in the air over here!
xx

1 year down, a lifetime to go

It's taken me forever to finally write a post about Miles and I's anniversary getaway. Our first anniversary was perfect, just how I'd imagined it to be. We drove out to Del Mar and stayed at the bed and breakfast we stayed at the night of our wedding.  It's a quaint little b&b that feels like home which is why I love it. Each room is decorated beautifully and every room has their own theme. We stayed in the Lotus Room the night of our wedding, but we decided to mix things up stay in another suite. We ended up in the Georgia O'Keeffe room which was beautiful and lively with character. The photos speak for themselves. 

After checking in and getting settled we still had time to spare before our dinner reservations, so we strolled down the street to overlook the ocean and took some time to breathe in all that wonderful ocean air. It makes me sad to think this is no longer my home, I still feel like it's my home...but I know one day we'll find our way back here because there is just simply no place like it.

A perfect heart shaped rock we stumbled upon. Love was in the air.

For dinner we ate at the restaurant that catered our wedding. I had mushroom raviolis and Miles had a pasta in rosa sauce. We swapped back and forth and ended up sharing because both were so delicious. We couldn't stop laughing at the photo I took of Miles because of the heater in the background that looks like a hat. It looks like he just graduated and technically he did--he graduated from being newlywed--although we still have yet to take our honeymoon, so I'm gonna hold onto that newlywed title for as long as I can. People just love newlyweds, don't they? 

They do things like "treat you to the chef's special" that was out of this world delicious by the way.

They also treated us to a delicious dessert and a nice bottle of olive oil that I dropped and shattered on our way to the car...oops.

Our first anniversary wouldn't be complete without delving into our top layer of cake, although we cheated a little, we didn't actually freeze our original, the bakery we used offered to recreate a fresh one for us, and that sounded much more appetizing. And it was.

We also exchanged gifts. Year one calls for paper so I made Miles a frame filled with paper maps of all the places we've lived together and a paper booklet titled "52 Reasons I love You" one reason for each of the weeks we've been married. Miles so beautifully hand-wrote his wedding vows and framed them for me. I loved it.

Before we left the next morning, we stopped and had breakfast at the exact spot we had gotten married. Literally, the table we sat at was the exact spot where we stood and said "I do" one year before. I couldn't think of a better way to end our anniversary. I'm so in love with this man, time seems to only make my love grow stronger and I had no clue that was even possible.

Here's to many more trips around the sun with a love that could have been straight out of a movie, only better.

Wood Family Montage Part Two

Once again our video clips began to compile and so I set aside a day to create chapter two of our journey as a family and this is what I came up with:

And if you didn't get enough of us already, here is a repost of part one: