Anniversary plans

We're coming up on one year of marriage - wow! A lot has happened and on one hand it flew by, but on the other hand 9/18/10 seems like so long ago. We've been planning a weekend back in Santa Cruz for a few months and we're so excited to go back and celebrate one year of wedded bliss ♥

Our weekend getaway plans include...

Staying at the Babbling Brook Inn, where we have a room with a fireplace, private deck and hot tub (We've never been to this inn before. It's pricey but this is the perfect excuse!)

A picnic at Lighthouse Point, the beautiful location where we said our vows last year.

Heading to Hoffman's Bakery - the bakery that provided our wedding cake - for our free anniversary cake. Oh heck yes we're cashing in on that!

A lunch or dinner at Kianti's, which catered our rehearsal dinner.

Sailing on the Chardonnay charter sailboat - we planned to do this on our honeymoon last year but they cancelled it last minute. I'm super excited to step foot on my namesake boat, haha.

Dinner at Michael's on Main, the restaurant that hosted our reception (Hopefully we can eat on the back deck where our party was held).

Hmmm most of these seem to revolve around eating :P Our vacations are often go-go-go, see everything and walk many miles. For this trip we're going to try and take it easy and relax! Can't wait!

P.S. If you want to see lots and lots of photos from our wedding weekend, check out the "Our Wedding" tab at the top of the page.

My quarter century birthday

Thursday was my big 2-5! I have a feeling I'm always still going to feel young for a long time, because I'm the youngest in my group of friends - not to mention that hubs is 7 years older than me. This week was tons of fun celebrating my quarter century of life.

Tuesday

My thoughtful hubby surprised me with these roses after work, because he knew I'd be busy the next two days.

Wednesday

We went to dinner at J's coworker's house. Thank you Kim for the delicious meal!

Thursday

My coworker and friend gave me with this wine glass gift - how perfect right?! Thanks Sabrina!!

"Hooray for Chardonnay!"

For lunch I went to Zen Sushi with my coworkers. Yum!




Kohaku Roll

Then after work several friends joined me for happy hour at Cafeteria. I think we had a good dozen people there and it was a lot of fun. We even somehow convinced J to go to Faces with us for a bit. That's one for the record books!

My older sister brought balloons and my younger sister gave me a beautiful framed collage of all my favorite wedding photos :)

Saturday
I did some shopping in the morning. Among several other things, I got this dress. It was originally $70, on sale for half off, plus I had a $10 off coupon. $25! I'll probably wear it to a wedding next weekend.

We had dinner at Chicago Fire (my fave) with my parents and sister, then headed to Raley Field for a River Cats game. My mom brought this beautiful bouquet of flowers from her yard when we met at our house beforehand.

Sadly, I forgot my camera that night. We witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets ever, and of course I always love going to the game on Saturday nights because they have fireworks afterwards! All the little kids around us cheering, screaming and jumping for joy at the fireworks display was hilarious!

Sunday
This wasn't for my birthday, but we went refrigerator shopping and then spontaneously decided to drop by a granite and tile warehouse to get ideas for our future kitchen and bathrooms :) It was sooo much fun and we came away from it with an agreement on colors and styles we like. I told J it was one of my favorite dates we've ever been on - I LOVE home decor/renovation stuff and I can't wait to get started!!

Overall, I really felt the love and was so honored that family and friends were sweet enough to give me a gift, a card, a text message or come spend time with me!

24 was a great year for me.

• The best thing that happened was that I married my husband. He's perfect for me!
• My parents also moved to this area, which I have loved loved loved.
• We hosted our first tacky holiday sweater party, a dream of mine for far too long!
• We started house hunting and while we're not quite there, we're in a good place when it comes to our future home.
• I had many great times with fabulous friends - most of which I didn't blog about, unfortunately.

As my 25th year begins, I have some great plans for it!

Two days before our wedding

On Thursday I woke up about 6 a.m., too excited to sleep any longer (this happened every day that week, really). We went out to breakfast at Cafe Brasil, where we both tried Brazilian dishes.

After breakfast we went to CVS and got my sick groom lots of cough medicine, then Costco to stock up on food for the week! We got tons of stuff for us, plus food for our BBQ on Sunday.

We had lunch back at home and relaxed on our lovely hammock for a while, and in the afternoon I had an appointment at Nails 2 Envy for a mani/pedi. Not perfect, but a nice job (American manicure on hands and feet... I took this picture later at the beach).

We had Woodstock's Pizza delivered for dinner, and walked down to Natural Bridges State Beach.

At night we hot tubbed again!

Apple Hill

My grandparents live in Texas but have been in California for the past few weeks because of our wedding. They've been RVing around the state and this weekend they were in our neighborhood!

On Friday night James and I joined Grandma and Grandpa for dinner at Formoli's.

Saturday my sisters joined too, for an afternoon in Apple Hill. We had a picnic at Boa Vista Orchards, where I picked up a bottle of apple wine. It's good - to me it tastes like a very sweet chardonnay [a good description of me too, don't you think?]

We also walked around High Hill Ranch. Isn't this picture of Rose and Grandpa the cutest?!

It's so pretty in the foothills!

Sunday I should have unpacked from the wedding... but didn't. I did get a majority of my wedding thank you notes done though! I think a small blister is forming on my thumb!

For dinner last night we went to The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant I've been wanting to try forever but is way too expensive for a normal date. But our one week anniversary was the perfect excuse! Everyone raves about it, but we didn't love it. I'd say it's overpriced and overrated... a fun experience though.

Santa Cruz weekend... last one before the wedding!

We drove to Santa Cruz this weekend for the last time before the wedding. On Friday we both worked half days so that we could make it there by late afternoon.

First Appointment: Meeting with our reception coordinator and day of coordinator at our reception site. Both ladies were super nice, and we made some decisions that made me so excited for our big day! Our wedding day is going to rock!!

After that meeting we checked into our hotel, the Quality Inn, which was really nice! We'll probably stay there in the future. It's about half a mile to downtown, so we walked to dinner to avoid parking.

Dinner was at Kianti's, which is the restaurant that's catering our rehearsal dinner. We're having pizza and lasagna, so that's what we ordered and OMG yummm! Especially the lasagna. Love. It.

We went this weekend to listen to the band playing at the restaurant where our reception is. One of the great things about having our reception there is that they have a live band every Saturday. It's in the bar, which is right next to our private patio. Basically we have free entertainment, which is great! The bad thing is that we can't control who is playing, but we're carefree people and had faith that they wouldn't book crappy bands.

So last night the band that's playing on our wedding day was there. After our dinner we drove back there, had a few drinks and listened to the band. They had cool blues-type music that was fun.

I'll be honest - last time we went in March, that other band was a lot more fun and better for dancing. But our band is good and everything will be fine!

Here goes my first blog video. Tell me: Would you dance to this? Maybe if you had some free booze?? It's okay if nobody does, as long as they're having fun!

That was last night. This morning, we met with our bakery about our wedding cake. We got to taste the flavors and decided on princess torte: sponge cake, whipped cream and raspberry filling.

Then we went to check out locations to take pictures before our ceremony. We decided that the beach right next to our ceremony site is perfect and super convenient. And freaking beautiful. So I'm really excited to be there with our amazing photographer!

It was overcast in the morning, but sunny in the afternoon.

Then we headed home! We're super tired! I love getting home Saturday, so I still have Sunday to have a normal weekend.

Goal #74: Celebrate with James when he passes the PTA exam

My fiance is now a State of California licensed Physical Therapy Assistant :) He passed both tests that were required two weeks ago and received his license last week. To celebrate, we went to see The Undulations on Friday night at Zinfandel Grille. Honestly we would have gone anyway because we love that band, but we turned it into a celebration as well!

We had nachos and margaritas at Rose's house beforehand, then just ordered some appetizers to split at the restaurant. The band recognizes us now because we've been to so many shows, and talked to us. After Zinfandel Grille we went back to Rose's place down the street and hung out until late!

See my list of 100 goals to accomplish before my 30th birthday here.

Flying & the fourth

Yesterday, we got to fly in James' stepdad Bob's little plane. He's a pilot by trade and I'd been wanting to fly with him for a while. It was fun!

The plane was really small. Inside we had less room than in my car. And we had to wear these headsets that protected our ears from the noise. They have microphones that allow us to talk to each other easily.

We flew from Sacramento Executive airport, over the valley

and the delta, and east bay

and the San Francisco Bay... here's the Bay Bridge with SF in the distance

here's Alcatraz

AT&T Park

the city

Only a little bit of the Golden Gate Bridge could be seen above the fog.

We had planned to fly into Half Moon Bay and have lunch (How nice that cool weather would have been!), but it was too foggy to land there. The fog started right at the coastline - it was clear everywhere else. So instead we flew north over to Sausalito

and the Napa Valley

and back over the Sacramento Valley

There's our house (circled in the middle)!

And finally back to Executive Airport. The entire trip took only about an hour and a half. It was only 30 minutes to fly to San Francisco - a trip that would take 90 minutes driving.

After the flight we all went out to lunch.

Later in the evening James and I headed over to the Arden area to watch the fireworks show at Cal Expo. Since we were in the area, we decided to have dinner at a restaurant I've been wanting to try - Tex Wasabi's. It's a restaurant by Guy Fieri of the Food Network, that serves the ridiculous and ingenious combination of barbecue and sushi. Unfortunately, the food was just fine and the service wasn't that good. So it won't become a regular.

We watched the fireworks in from the movie theater on Ethan Way. Great view! But it took a good hour to get out through the traffic.

Today we went to the gym and I got a massage. Love those 3-day weekends :)

My 24th birthday

Yesterday was my 24th birthday and I feel loved! In addition to the dozens of texts, emails and Facebook messages I received, James had the most gorgeous vase of flowers and a balloon delivered to my office in the morning. Thank you sweetie!

I went out to lunch at Mikuni Sushi with the girls at work, then for dinner James and I went to Chicago Fire. The cutest baby was sitting at the table next to us and loved James... it was hilarious because he looked just like him! I felt like I was looking at our future child!

And, I received the most thoughtful cards (yep 3 of them!) from my mom in the mail the other day… thank you to all who made my birthday so special!

Graduation party

As of last Thursday, James has completed his Physical Therapy Assistant program! I'm so proud of him! He even started a new job immediately on Tuesday that's working out well so far. The last thing he has to do is pass two state exams, then he'll be a licensed PTA.

On Saturday night, we went to Pyramid Alehouse and celebrated with all the students that have been in his class for the past two years (There are only 24 of them). It was a lot of fun to meet everyone!

Most of the 2010 PTA class

James & some of the guys

Travel journal

On Friday night, James and I met my sister at brother-in-law for dinner at Tres Hermanas. The gave me the most adorable gift to take on my vacation!

 

It has these tabs and pages with prompts for you to fill in

AND it came with a bunch of stickers and a packing list :)

Thanks Sam! This will be an excellent train/bus/plane/ferry activity!