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.

Nana and Grandaddy!

We are so thankful to have Nana and Grandaddy here to help us unpack from NY and to watch Suzy while I am in an intensive class this week. Yesterday we got to catch a sneak peek at Baby and went up to Griffith Observatory to see some great views of LA.

Today, Nana, Grandaddy, and Suzy went off to Palm Springs for her first big girl sleepover! She made invitations and everything she was so excited. Looks like she had a fun day...I just got this picture:

a bittersweet valentines...

Today is super sweet because we are together, yet bittersweet because in just 2 days Suzy and i will be back in California and Elvis will continue on here in NY for a couple more months. To make things a little sweeter, we did get his first ticket back to visit us which will be in just 2 weeks from now...it'll be our anniversary weekend and we will have the ultrasound to see if baby Henriquez Baldwin is a niño or niña!! 

Suzy woke up with a fever today which also put a mild damper on the mood today...she didn't even finish her heart shaped chocolate donut which was an immediate clue that something's not right. We did go out for lunch with Elvis though, and we will be cooking something yummy at home tonight. Here are my cute dates:

Suzy drew this picture for me for Valentine's Day....I love that she drew baby inside too and then a close up of the baby at the bottom =) 

As we were making a card for Elvis, I asked Suzy what she wanted to write to him. She said: "Papi mira! Soy una gatita."  Literally: "Papi look! I'm a kittycat".   The end =)

Suzy and Elvis have had some special times together recently, anticipating the fact that she won't get to see him for a bit. They played in the snow all afternoon this past weekend and then went out on a date on Sunday afternoon:

easiest v-day craft evahhh

When Suzy was younger, she wasn't really into coloring, painting, etc due to not wanting to get dirty at all. However, she has turned into quite the Craft Queen, always wanting to paint, draw, make something. I love seeing her creative side coming out and seeing the skills that we take for granted develop...for example, her stick people actually look like people (she recently made an uncanny drawing of Granddaddy with "itty bitty hair") and just this week, she has really figured out how to use the scissors well to follow lines I draw for her. She has wanted me to draw fruits, shapes, etc for her to cut out which has been a great way to stay busy!

Since we are getting close to Valentine's Day, she wanted to make a craft. Since she has already used up most of her paper, paint, etc that we had on hand here in NY (and I wasn't heading to Wally world during the great blizzard of '13), we had to get creative with the basics and the little bit of paint we had left. Thanks Pinterest for some ideas!

For the record, I think this was the first time that something I tried from Pinterest didn't turn out unrecognizable/inedible. 

All you have to do is get a toilet paper roll, squish it into a heart shape, dip it in a little bit of paint and use it like a stamp.

Voila! Heart art! 

Much easier than trying to cut a heart stamp out of a potato...believe me.

We made something similar last year at playschool....celery rose stamps which were also really easy:

However, we never keep celery at our house because neither I nor Elvis can stand it...only Suzy has an interest in it because of Wonder Pets (hands-down my fave cartoon)! 

Suzy was so excited that she starting running in circles singing this song: ("Valentine's Day is almost here!")

Happy Birthday....

....to my very favorite brother in the whole wide world! 

weekend getaway

We took advantage of our next to last weekend together in NY to drive down to a cute little bed and breakfast in the countryside of Pennsylvania, where we met up with David, Lucy, Lulu and Nissa to spend a wonderful, snowy weekend. We went spelunking around nearby towns and played in the snow and ate lots of good food and had lots of fun together. One of the highlights of being in NY has being able to travel on the weekends to see east coast friends and family, and we have definitely taken advantage of seeing these dear friends several times b/c we don't know when the next time will be. Here are some highlights:

ps...David took the good pictures below (http://www.dacphotographs.com/)...i took the rest.

guess this is the first baby bump picture!

it's fun having friends that are pro photographers

lots of lovin' and huggin' went on this weekend with these girls!

Suzy is enjoying a frozen chocobanana on this frigid day... 

the bed and breakfast is located in a house where they used to make dulcimers

sea lion elation

I hope that through this video you get a taste of the tiny bit of excitement that Suzy was feeling over seeing the sea lions swim around at the aquarium the other day....and this was before the show even started!