3 Years

January 1, 2010

Dan and I celebrated our third anniversary on New Year's Day. Dan was off (yay!) and we enjoyed a relaxing day together - with no plans and no agenda. It was very refreshing.

The day started off with chocolate chip pancakes, a recent favorite of mine. Dan made himself blueberry pancakes, since he doesn't like chocolate (crazy, I know). The mini heart pancake was a cute addition for our anniversary morning.

I think we were going to go to the beach, but again, the weather wasn't in our favor. So we just spent the day at home together.

Later that evening, we went to our favorite restaurant in town, Kalapawai, to celebrate. Everything was perfect and delicious, as usual. Before dinner, we tried for a while to get the self-timer thing right. Finally got a few good ones, but the outtakes are funny.

Since our anniversary is so close to Christmas, we haven't done separate anniversary gifts (for the past three years, at least). Instead, we had decided we'd rather do something special together. Like a day trip or weekend getaway. Later in the spring, when Dan can take leave, we hope to island-hop a bit (especially if we'll be moving in June).

This year, though, Dan re-gave me a tiny, black leather journal. Dan initially gave me this journal when we were engaged. Inside, he had hand-written our love story from his perspective, dating through the proposal and engagement. I remember wanting to know our story as he remembered it, because I knew we probably remembered different things,  and I think I'm definitely a words of affirmation person. This is probably one of my favorite gifts ever. For our anniversary, Dan continued our story through the wedding. I'm sure our years of marriage (thus far) will be journaled at some point, too. 

He's a keeper. 

I'm thankful for the three years we've had together and for the many more ahead of us.

Last year, I blogged about our two year anniversary and posted the links to our official wedding photos and video. To see them, click here.

For fun, here's a video our friend Jonathan made of our wedding. He's a very talented photographer himself (check out his website here). 

[I think in uploading the video, I somehow decreased the image quality. My fault, not Jonathan's, but the video is still cute.]

Our wedding was such a special day with friends and family!

Keep smiling...

New Year's Eve

A group of us decided to go into Waikiki for New Year's Eve. We didn't really have a plan, just figured we'd eat dinner somewhere, hang out, and ring in 2013 with fireworks on the beach! Since we were making plans the day of, most restaurants were already filled with reservations, and we didn't want to eat at 10pm. So we actually ended up eating at Buffalo Wild Wings. Not your typical New Year's Eve spot, but there was no wait and being with friends was really all any of us cared about. 

We figured we'd hang out at the restaurant until it was pretty close to midnight, but to our surprise, BWW closed at 9pm (understandable, I guess). So we walked around for a bit, but eventually just made our way down to the beach...with 3 hours to spare. For a while, we doubted if we were in the right spot because there was no one else on the beach. But hey, we got our pick of seating! Surprisingly enough, though, it was freezing (well, no, but very chilly) down by the water and we were all wishing we brought more blankets! When we first got to the beach, we thought the 3 hours were going to drag. And they kind of did. We all felt old, since we were struggling to stay awake until midnight. But it was a fun memory - trying to keep warm, trying to stay awake, and stargazing on a beautiful, clear night - and a special way to ring in the new year. 

Funny story: we were on the beach in front of the Hale Koa hotel, where there was a big New Year's Eve party going on. So for our 3 hour wait, we at least had music in the background...ha! But the DJ of this party, well, his timing was definitely off. He started counting down to midnight way too early and sure enough, at the end of the countdown there were no fireworks...until 4 minutes later. Very awkward. And anti-climactic. 

Our friends Jackie and Brady were at the Hale Koa, so they came and joined us on the beach for the firework show.

The fireworks over the water were so beautiful! And c'mon, fireworks in Waikiki on New Year's Eve. Not a bad way to celebrate. 

Happy New Year!
Still can't believe we're in 2013.
And that we live in Hawaii.

Keep Smiling...

Christmas

Third married Christmas. 

First Christmas just the two of us (well, 3 including Sydney). 

On Christmas morning, we were blessed to open many thoughtful gifts. We had packages from our families and a few gifts for each other. Sydney, of course, had some things to open as well. And even without her gifts, she would have been perfectly content playing with the ribbons, bows, and paper from our gifts. 

After we opened presents and stockings (and cleaned up Sydney's wrapping paper mess), Dan made a delicious (and our third annual) Christmas morning brunch. I'm thankful I have a husband who loves to cook!

Apparently, almost everyone in Hawaii goes to the beach for Christmas, and we thought about it, but it was kind of a gloomy day.

So after brunch, we FaceTimed with almost everyone in our family and finished preparing the house for dinner. Normally, we just have the round table in our dining space (seats 4), but since we invited more than two people over, we brought in additional tables (the bistro table, which has been stored in our garage all year, and our outside patio table). It was crammed, but cozy. 

Then, that evening, we enjoyed a delicious Christmas dinner with friends at our house. Dan had invited some of the guys he works with - single guys and guys he knew that weren't going to be celebrating with family. A few close friends stopped by, too. The DiBlasi sauce was a hit! Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of the people, though.

Overall, it was a relaxing and special day, with old and new traditions. Merry Christmas!

Keep Smiling...

Christmas Eve

In the past, Dan and I have been able to spend Christmas with both sides of our family. His family always does their big Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve, and my side on Christmas Day, so it works out perfectly. It's definitely such a blessing that both sides of our family celebrate in upstate NY! 

This year was different for many reasons. But since we were celebrating on our own this year, I realized that we could go to our first candlelight Christmas Eve service at church. And so we did. And it was really nice. 

We spent Christmas Eve evening with our friends Kelly and Andy and their adorable son Andrew. We're so thankful for their friendship. I love the background story, too. It really is a crazy, small world. One of my coworkers in Erie knew Kelly from high school (I believe) and knew that they had just moved to Hawaii and that Andy was also in the Army, so she passed along Kelly's contact info incase we had any questions. Boy, did we have questions! Kelly and Andy were such a huge resource for us. And they graciously answered all of our questions/emails. They have two labs, so they shared info about shipping a dog to Hawaii. They shipped both cars, and we ended up using the same company they did for our second vehicle. I can't express how comforting it was to talk to someone who had just been through the big move we were preparing for. 

Anyways, back to Christmas Eve. We ate dinner at their place and then went to church for the service. 

It was a really special service and time together. My favorite part was the Christmas hula that the little girls of the church performed. Absolutely adorable (sadly, no pictures of them). 

After the service, we parted ways and headed back home. I got in my Christmas pajamas, obviously (Dan saved his for Christmas morning, don't worry). Then we each picked one gift to open, and Dan started cooking the famous DiBlasi Sauce for Christmas Day. The last time we made "the" sauce was with our friends Brooke and Freeland (see here). We thought of them and wished they were with us this time, too. 

Sydney, of course, didn't leave his feet...just incase something were to fall on the ground. It simmered all night. The house smelled delish!

While Dan was cooking (I helped a little), I was playing around with the settings on my camera and took lots of pictures of our Christmas tree.

To make it feel more magical and Christmas-like, I added snow (again). And yes, I know it doesn't snow inside, but we can pretend the snow is outside of the window. 

We had a wonderful, low-key Christmas Eve and enjoyed a lot of quality time just the two of us. But we definitely missed celebrating with our families. Hopefully we'll be closer to everyone next year!

Keep Smiling...