Bath Bombin'

During one of my loooong days alone at La Costa I decided I needed to get a little girly with it.  Our room had a huge hot tub and I was determined I would get some use out of it before the week was over. The gift shop sold these super cute bath bombs shaped into treats- cupcakes, ice cream, candies, etc.  I got myself a Mango cupcake, a bottle of champagne and straight for the bath tub I went!  Aus wasn't due home for a few hours so I had plenty of relax time and a chance to get further into my book.  We received a few marriage/love books as wedding gifts so I figured this trip was an excellent time to start reading them.  I actually learned a lot from this book, The Power of Two and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn and strengthen their marriage.

Ta-da! Relaxed, rejuvenated and 1 bottle of champagne deep!

Audios San Diego!

On our last day in San Diego Aus finished early so we had some free time to go exploring.  We decided to rent a car so we could really check out the city and have fun. We saw so many different beaches and explored lots of coves and scenic spots. We drove along Hwy 1 (also known as the beach coast) which is pretty famous as it runs right against the Pacific.  We drove and drove and stopped occasionally to see what we could get ourselves into.

 My lovely Chauffeur

 bet his pictures are better than mine...

how beautiful is this!!! 

I took this from inside the car while driving...nasty windshield!

How sweet is this guy!  I've never been so close to a squirrel and he was so fun to watch. I wanted to scoop him up and take him home to Baxter!

We visited the Self Realization Garden and got some great pics. Aus has some hilarious pics he took of us "meditating", he will post them on his blog in the next few days so be sure to check them out.

enjoying the view

we are so close to Mexico!

ah-hmmmmmm

We ended our day downtown San Diego catching another delicious Mexican meal.  I headed to the airport around 10pm to catch my flight.  Boy was that fun!! NOT. My first flight headed to Atlanta around 11pm and landed at 5:30am -3 hour time change.  I had a 3 hour layover where I pushed two chairs together and made myself a little bed. Such great sleep in an airport with a lady over the loud speaker every 3-5 minutes. I was sooo ready to get home.  I finally landed in RDU around 10am and headed straight home to my bed! Baxter was sure glad to see me!

La Costa

Whoa! I have so much blogging to catch up on!  Last week Austin had to travel to San Diego (Carlsbad to be exact) for work so I decided I might just need to join him!  After he showed me pictures of the resort he was going to I booked my flight almost immediately.  Aus spent his days working hard in a ball room and I spent mine sleeping late, lounging by the pool and reading a few books. We had nice weather, mid 70's most days, but it was still too chilly to swim in the pool for long. 

The resort was dead all week.  Had 7 pools to myself! :)

Loved that California sunshine!

 My spot for a good 2-3 hours each day.

Yes, please!!!

Aus got off work at a reasonable hour most nights so we were able to head out on the town for some fabulous dining.  My favorite was definitely Casa de Bandini possibly the best Mexican food I've ever put in my mouth. It was so authentic and fresh; my mouth is watering just thinking about it. One night we headed downtown Carlsbad and a had a few drinks at the Ocean House then not loving the menu went else where for dinner.  We stumbled upon this small Italian place, Vigiluccis, a little piece of heaven right here on earth! Aus had some amazing Carbonara, and if you know us we are major Carbonara fan/critics.  Aus said this was some of the best he had ever had. I had a tomatoe/asparagus/mushroom/sausage penne dish in a white wine sauce that was awesome.

After dinner we headed to the beach so I could put my feet in the Pacific.  I don't know that I'll ever go back so I had to make sure my piggy’s touched the sand!  It was freeeeezing. I learned that the Pacific is much cooler than our Atlantic, even in the summer the water can be too chilly for swimming.

 I'm in the Pacific Ocean!!

On the beach

Proof!



Windy Peak is boom boom boomin!

Windy Peak is growing!  Austin and I have had a great start to 2011 with our photography business.  For starters, we are an official business with the IRS (joy!) and we have a legal assumed name for the business (nobody else can call themselves WPP).  We opened a WPP bank account and have cute little debit cards that say Windy Peak Photography. We have officially booked 4 weddings, 2 bridal shoots and have another 3 weddings in the making. Considering we don't advertise yet and are only booking by word of mouth we feel like this is a great start.  We also did something HUGE last week.  We broke down and purchased a new big daddy camera- the Canon 5D Mark II. This is the crème de la crème of cameras for professional photographers.  We are super stoked about this and our image quality is going to improve dramatically. We also just purchased a much more professional website.  This was much overdo (I can't stand our current website) and should be up and running in a few weeks.  It will still be at the same address, which you should check out in a few weeks! WPP website One more super exciting piece of news- we are going live on TheKnot.com as NC Wedding Photographers on February 14th! (Nice day we picked, ehh?) We are feeling very confident that this will bring much business for the rest of 2011 and really get us jump started to book in 2012. Right now we don't have a lot in our portfolio, only having done a few low budget weddings, so we are feeling really good about what we will be able to add to showcase on our site in the upcoming months.  Unfortunately, most of the weddings we booked are towards the end of the year, so it will be a while before you see the results. The best thing about this business: it belongs to Austin and me. I just love love love working with him and sharing this with him.  It has brought us to a whole new level in our relationship to experience this together.  He teaches me so much (he is the real pro, let's not forget that!) and is so patient with me while I'm still learning.  We have so much fun on site together and when we finish a shoot and look at our final product on the computer it's one of the best feelings in the world to know we created it together. I love weddings and he loves photography so starting this business really hits home for both of our passions. I hope we do well and take over the triangle in wedding photography!  To all my blog followers, watch out! One day you may be very happy you know us! :o)

Happy Shower!

Happy Baby Shower to Katie and Beth!  We woke up Saturday morning and headed to Danville for our great friends baby shower.  Katie and Beth are both having little girls and their shower was perfectly pink!  Frannie and Shannon hosted the lovely affair and a good time was had by all.  They did something different: had a coed shower!  It was nice to change it up a bit and have our boys in the mix- although, mine refused to come but that is another story. I was SO excited about my new two-day-old camera and taking lots of fun pics at the shower.  Welp, what do you know.  Not ten minutes into the shower my camera DIED!  I had taken three pictures and then I get the flashing change battery light! Ahhhh, I was so sad.

One of the only pics I got, the damn beverage table.  I stuck to water as I was still rehydrating from the night before.  I did have some of that green punch and boy was it delicious!  I'll have to get the recipe for all you blog followers to try it out.  Orrr, wait...do I have any followers?

                                Emily, Katie, Blair, me and Jenn
Moments after this picture I got the flashing light and it was all over for the photo-ops.  We played games, opened loads of gifts and ate a doughnut cake! mmmm.  We were all given a little tub of playdough and instructed to make a baby out of it.  We would then be judged our creativity and new baby accomplishment. Mine was limbless after I moved it to the judges table.  Needless to say, I lost, Emily won, go figure. Game on!!!



Birthdays, Birthdays, Birthdays!

Well, I'm 26! We had a great weekend with friends celebrating my birthday, more than once! Friday night we had a few friends over and then headed DT Durham to Tobacco Road-an extremely cool new spot.  One of my coworkers is leaving the SICU, so we all gathered there to say our good-byes.  Our two good friends Clif and Kimmy were in town visiting some college friends so we stopped over to their place for a while to hang. It was so good to see them. Clif was one of Austin's groomsman and great friend to us both.  There is nothing like hanging out with hometown friends!! We went back to our place and finally tucked our heads in around 3am! Sheeesh! 

Keegan, Courtney, me and Kathryn

My fav, Court!

We are soooo cool!

Sweet Kimmy and me

We got up Saturday morning and headed to Danville with multiple things on our agenda.  We had a baby shower to attend, Aus wanted to check out the car dealership, we had a photo shoot for Daly 7 hotels, and we were planning a fun filled night of celebrating until wee hours of the morning! A few of us had dinner at Ham's restaurant, a delicious Danville choice if I do say so myself!  I had Nachos (who's surprised?) and the rest of the crew had a combination of burgers and sandwiches.  We left Ham's and after much discussion, headed to Bogies.  We had a super fun night!  Dancing the night away and laughing until our stomachs hurt.  They finally kicked us out around 2am and Aus and I headed back to our hotel room. And, oh yea, I got my camera! :o) Thanks hubs!!!

Birthday Shots! The first of many.

My biggest blog fan! :o)

This was the only Aus-approved pic I could post. He had a fun night!!

Sick little Bax

We have a sick kitty on our hands! We took Baxter to the vet on Monday because we noticed he was licking himself constantly "down there". I goggled the possible reasons for this and pretty much everything I read was talking about a urinary tract infection or urethral block, which is a medical emergency in cats and can sometimes be life-threatening.  After reading this I called the vet first thing Monday morning and they of course, wanted me to bring him in.  They said he had a high pH in his urine and had crystals (stones) in his urine.  These crystals can sometimes cause a blockage in the urter, so they were very glad we brought him in.  From what they described and I've read, I think these are very similar to kidney and bladder stones in humans. They gave him a onetime antibiotic by injection and some ointment we took home with us.  We put the ointment on his paws once a day and he licks it off.  I've smeared it on him twice and he looks at me like 'what in the world!' and then flees off. He isn't a big fan of getting dirty so he licks it off immediately.  Later that night, he was acting really weird and we could tell he didn't want to sit on his bum.  He started crying real loud and was in obvious distress.  He then peed on the floor!  We called the emergency vet line and they told us to watch him and make sure he pees ever 4-6 hours and if he stops we needed to bring him in immediately because a blockage may have occurred.  It was so hard for Aus and I to watch him cry.  After he peed (maybe passed a stone?) he was acting much better and finally fell asleep. The vet also told us he was dehydrated and to give him wet food (which he normally never gets) and mix it with a little water.  Now, THIS makes him one happy cat!  I never knew there were sooo many flavors/types of wet food for cats. Today he was chowing down on shrimp and salmon! Yummy! Prayers that our sweet kitty gets better soon!

Austin is 27!

Happy Birthday, Aus! We celebrated Austin's birthday several times over the weekend and each celebration involved FOOD!  Food, food and more food!  On his real birthday, January 14th, we got all dolled up and I took him on a little date to The Mint.  We started our dinner with escargot (a first for both of us) and martinis.  I had prosciutto crusted salmon and Aus had lamb chops.  We shared a side of triple truffle mac and cheese and boy was it delicious!  The atmosphere of the restaurant was so perfect and they had an awesome band playing upstairs in the bar area.  We left happy, full and ready to take on Aus' 27th year!  The next night, Saturday night, we went out with Abi, my mom and aunt for some Mexican.  Always a good choice in my book!!! Sunday, Aus' parents came down for a visit and we spent the day playing outside with Abi (and her new roller skates), catching up on the New Year and messing around the house. I took my mom to the airport around 4pm to catch her flight back to Chicago.  That evening we all went out to Ruth's Chris steakhouse for dinner.  Needless to say, it was AMAZNIG.  Most of us had a delicious hunk of beef; Cathy had crab cakes and Abi popcorn shrimp. We had a wonderful time out full of food and wonderful cocktails. I didn't take many pictures because I am still awaiting my new camera.  My birthday is this Saturday and I'm hoping a sweet man I know will buy me a new one!