1st Anniversary Adventures

First time seeing these in person. WHAT KIND OF ANGELINO AM I??? The embarrassed kind.

Our first anniversary fell on a Monday, which was kind of a bummer. Why couldn't we have a Sunday like everybody else? I'll tell ya why! Leap year!

So, we extended our anniversary to span across two weekends and make up for the lack of having one day to celebrate our awesomeness. Here is a mini recap of our adventures, and a lot of pictures to go along with it.

It started on Saturday, September 15th. We had a leisurely morning before heading to LACMA in the afternoon.


I hadn't been there in years, so it was a lovely way to start the weekend.

Tim, "If you're gonna paint a square, at least have straight lines."

The Orator by Magnus Zeller was talking to me.

Who's that guy?

Dress: Tuc + Wes by Orly Shani, Bag: Mark.

Our adventure continued to 3rd Street Promenade, where we had dinner at Tar & Roses. We had appetizers, "small plates", and booze for dinner.

Summer squash and pancetta  

Tim and his squid ink tagliatelle 

Beef cheek ravioli. Yum.

We'll love you forever if you give us a board covered in meat and cheese.

My first time trying bone marrow. More please.

Beets and goat cheese. I could live off this stuff. 

Because we'd had such an early dinner, we managed to catch the end of the sunset off the Santa Monica Pier and just stood their for a while drinking the coffee we'd gotten instead of dessert.

Sunday we relaxed all day until my family came over to help us eat wedding cake. I even got the toppers out and put them back in their exact original places - the cake still had indentations where they sat last year.

We made delicious food and my family ate all of it. (including all of my precious sourdough bread)

I don't know how this cake was so delicious. Seriously, no idea. Rum cake. Custard. Amazing.

Monday night we made dinner together. The goal was to recreate and improve upon the very first meal we made together - on Valentine's Day 2008.

I think we did a pretty good job. First course was a mixed green salad with raspberries, avocado, warm goat cheese and raspberry pecan vinaigrette.

2008                                                                                                                              2012

Our main course was Italian sausage "paella" with garlic roasted chicken. The first time we baked the chicken separately. This time we just threw it all together in one pot.

2008                                                                                                                              2012

And for dessert we had Neapolitan ice cream (which practically nobody makes anymore, wtf?) with chunks of raspberry dark chocolate Hershey kisses, and more raspberries.
No big surprise the stores didn't have raspberry kisses in September. It seems like more of a February thing.

2008                                                                                                                              2012

Overall, the recreation of our anniversary/valentine's meal was a success.

Up next we had a wonderful romantic trip to San Francisco planned. We were going to stay at a really nice hotel, go to the Giants game, and eat amazing food all weekend. I was going to see the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time... because I'm an embarrassed Californian and I have never seen it in person!

And then hubs got sick, which in turn got me sick. And while he was well enough to travel on Friday night after working from home for a few days, I was not. We were in the car less than five minutes on our way to drop Panda off at my parents' before we had to pull the car over so I could get my equilibrium back. I started to write a whole post about this week and being sick and how much it sucked, but you get the idea. I don't need to write a whole post about it. No matter how beautiful the prose may be. :P

The hotel was amazing and didn't charge us a cancellation fee because I was too sick to travel, and Southwest didn't even ask questions. They just gave us our miles back like it was no thang - said it was part of their policy and if we had missed our flight for some reason, forgotten about it, whatever, they still would have credited us the miles. Amazing.

The big bummer for the weekend was we had to give up our tickets to the Giants game, which ended up being the game the Giants won the NL West division title and secured their place in the playoffs. It would have been amazing to be there, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

We've decided to do something amazing to make up for this less than romantic weekend away, but as of now that is still to be determined.

To avoid ending on a downer, I would just like to say how happy I am to be married to such an amazing man. It has truly been an incredible year and I am so looking forward to all the years to come - and, hopefully, some mini vacations that will actually come through. ;)