this week’s highlights

Saturday / When Ryan and I were recently talking about our favorite childhood games, “Guess Who?” immediately came up for me.  And then when I heard that Ryan had never played it before? Well, I basically ran out of the house to go buy us a copy.  “Guess Who?” was easily one of my favorite games growing up.  And honestly, it is really a whole lot of fun all of these years later.

Sunday / When your niece tells you that what she wants for her birthday is a bar of chocolate with sprinkles and gummy bears on it, you go out and buy her one. But when you discover that said candy bar may have only existed in her imagination? Well, you do what you can to make her birthday wish come true. Or at least that’s what we did. Zio and I got a little crafty in the kitchen tonight making one very special birthday candy bar.  Here’s hoping that she remembers that she asked for it.  (And also that it tastes good!)

Monday / Today was our third day in a row of 90° weather, and neither one of us wanted to turn on a single thing in the kitchen to make dinner.  We were hot, it was dry out, and honestly we just weren’t in the mood to be standing over the stove cooking.  Luckily one of our absolute favorite grilled pizza flavors is heirloom tomato and oregano. And double lucky for us, we had just picked up two beautiful tomatoes from the farmer’s market on Saturday.

Tuesday / The heat finally broke today. And in a very surprising turn of events, we woke up to the weatherman reporting rain and thunderstorms over the next three days.  Well, nine years in we know better than to believe that we will be getting any sort of real rain.  So we both laughed it off a little bit.  But just in case the rain does move in, I suggested to Ryan that we head out for a little walk. Judging by these gorgeous blue skies, I’m not so convinced that we will see any rain at all. But either way, I’ll happily settle with this drop in temperatures.

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Wednesday / In the same breath I told Ryan that I felt like this had been a really productive week, and then I looked at my list of things to do in the next twenty-four hours and I said “holy sh!t there’s a lot to do!”  Somehow it feels like no matter how much advance planning I do, I’m still scrambling a little bit to pull everything together before we go out of town. But once the dust settles and all of my work is done, and our Christmas cards are ordered, and the Thanksgiving cards are mailed, and the gifts are ordered, and our clothes are ironed and packed. . .well, then it will feel really great to get away.  Because nothing makes me happier than leaving the house with all of those loose ends tied up.

Thursday / Amidst our normal daily work life, we both scheduled in a little bit of fun and relax time together today.  We headed up to La Jolla and enjoyed a little fishy lunch from our favorite spot, followed by a couples mani pedi.  There’s really nothing like a fresh coat of nail polish to make you feel like a new woman, am I right?  Plus having some insanely fresh sashimi for lunch really gets me going. So yeah, maybe not the most exciting Thursday, but pretty dang good in my book.

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Friday / Our bags are packed and we are officially ready to go. And to be totally honest, things are surprisingly calm over here. In more recent years we have often left our packing to the last minute. But after having a very honest conversation with myself about my complete dislike of leaving it to the last minute (and the feeling of being rushed and slightly stretched for time), we changed things up. Two days ago we prepped and packed all of our clothes. Yesterday we prepped and packed (what we could) for our toiletries and assorted odds and ends. And so today?  Well, there was pretty much nothing left to do except to put the last few things into our suitcases. Not only did that spark SO much joy for me, but it also gave us the time to finish up our Christmas card order.  And that really got me jazzed!