Marcieeeeeeeeee!

After the Shelleys left on Friday, I went to pick up my dear friend of many years Marcie! She and I met in Guatemala in 2002 and went back together in 2003 and she visited a couple of times in El Salvador as well (including our wedding!) What a great gift to be able to see each other after so long and to pick right up where we left off.

I feel so blessed to have had so many dear friends visiting lately, especially since i was right in the middle of a 4 week without Elvis stretch and it was getting mighty tough! (ps I get to see him in one week!)

Suzy loved Marcie instantly (may have had something to do with the crafts she brought for Suzy to do!) and it was so fun to enjoy good food, chai tea, LA and everyday life with her this past weekend!

Thanks Marce for coming and for your support and encouragement!! Love you!

we explored LA via the metro on Saturday, and here is the beautiful Marcie in front of Union Station

Bump!

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come again soon!

fun with the Shelleys!

Despite the fact that this week was the week before final papers are due for this quarter, it has been an awesome week filled with awesome visitors that I haven't seen in a loooong time. First, I'll catch you up on our visit with Josh, Danielle, and Harvey who were here. What a blessing to get to spend time with their family and finally catch up for real for the first time since college! Suzy had a ball playing with Harvey and practicing her big sister skills =) And hanging out with the Shelleys + the McPhails felt like a little college reunion! So fun! 

are these two cute or what?!

Malibu Beach...thanks Kel for taking pictures!

what a cutie!

our week involved lots of parks and picnics!

keeping busy

I'm thinking that the key to keeping my mind off of how much I miss Elvis is to keep busy. With Suzy and school, that's normally pretty easy. But we have been so thankful for so many friends and neighbors who have invited us to dinner, offered to keep Suzy for me or just helped out in random ways. For example, I got in my mind today that I needed to change the color of our bed skirt, but didn't realize until I was halfway into moving the mattress what a terrible idea that was to try by myself. So thankful for my friend Christy who showed up and helped me out!

Christy also invited us to Huntington Gardens last week....a beautiful, massive space of gardens, art museums, and an old estate. Remember the wedding planner when J-Lo broke that statue? Yep, filmed there! It's 207 acres big so we only saw a small portion. Suzy loved it though!

playing in the children's garden

loved this rare flower/tree. it said it was some kind of magnolia??

can you tell from the angle that Suzy took this picture?

chinese garden

anniversary date

Since our anniversary was on Monday but Elvis had to fly back to NY that day, we went out on a hot date Sunday night to our fave fancy shmancy Italian restaurant that has become our aniiversary spot, at least for the past 2 years. They have handmade ravioli filled with butternut squash and topped with brown butter sage sauce. Let's just say that i dream about that pasta all year. Thanks to Kelly for watching Suz for us and putting her to bed!

 They gave us a free dessert, but we had our hearts set on cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory (the one where Penny from Big Bang THeory supposedly works), so we hid it in my purse =)

We had a great evening, although we were a little anxious about the coming day which was out actual anniversary- I had the ultrasound the very next morning at 7 am and then he was going to have to fly back to NY after that. Note to self: having hubby fly to the other side of the country is not the best way to celebrate your anniversary.

Here is a video of when we told Suzy that her baby friend was going to be a boy (they wouldn't let her go to the ultrasound with us):

it's a ......

Papi's here!!!

Elvis is here for the weekend! He came in Friday night and we have enjoyed every second together under the warm California sun. Yesterday we celebrated P is for Papi day:

-pastries at Porto's bakery (our fave cuban bakery)
-pony rides
-park Merry Go Round (built in 1926)
-popcorn at the park
-plucking the stuck frisbee from the tree at the park
-pedestrians (meaning we went for a walk...can you see i'm trying really hard now with the p's...)
-pupusas for dinner
-pelicula after suz went to bed

OK so we didn't actually plan all the P stuff, it just happened to work out that way =)

Although it's never our first option to be apart (or second or third for that matter), it does make you treasure every single second of being together.

Today it was so great to be back at our church all together then do our weekly walk from church to the farmer's market in downtown LA and the Grand Central Market, then stop for boba tea while passing through Chinatown on the way home.

Tonight Elvis and I are going out on a hot date (first one in months! yay for being back around awesome friends that babysit for us!) to celebrate our 7 year wedding anniversary which is tomorrow. We were talking last night about how we've known each other for 8 years this month, and been married for 7...how many pupusas does that mean we have shared together in all those years?? My math says over 1000 for me and 2000 for him. That's a lot of pupusas. And a lot of love.