2010 in review

I saw this idea on a few blogs and decided that I wanted to document the year in pictures. I am so glad that I did because it has only reaffirmed how lucky and blessed we are, which is exactly what I needed on this dreary Friday morning where I am feeling sad about not being able to partake in any fun New Year's Eve plans. (Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but the hormones have been making me wacky lately.)

January 2010

The year got off to a fabulous start with a wine tasting trip to Charlottesville, Virginia (where we went to college). We hit pretty much every vineyard and enjoyed lots of time reading by a fire. It was heavenly.

The rest of January was spent in the French Quarter and/or Superdome celebrating the Saints Super Bowl run. We were lucky enough to have tickets to both of the playoff games, and I can honestly say that January 2010 will go down as one of the best months of our life. We had not a worry in the world and soaked up every second of being able to drink bloody mary's at 10:00am on a Sunday. It was everything I love about New Orleans rolled into one month: beads, black and gold everywhere, great food, street musicians, parades, celebrations and fun. This collection doesn't even put a dent in the pictures from this glorious month!

Arizona Cardinals Game

NFC Championship Game against the Vikings

February 2010

February was another fabulous month. The Saints won the Super Bowl on the same day as a Mardi Gras parade (does life get better?!?!), the city celebrated with a huge parade that I am pretty sure will go down as the best Super Bowl parade ever (no offense New England and Indy, but we have the parade thing down) and I stood in one of my best friend's weddings at the end of the month. Oh, and mixed into all of that was this little thing called Mardi Gras (probably the coldest Mardi Gras on record, too!)

March 2010

Apparently March 2010 was spent doing a whole lot of nothing because I have no pictures! After all the excitement of January and February, we were wiped out! We did celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary on March 31 with a delicious meal at Restaurant August.

April 2010

In April we headed to my parents' beach house in Florida to celebrate my mom's birthday and Easter. By this point in the year we were 100% sure we were ready to start a family.

May 2010

In early May we headed to Tampa to celebrate the wedding of 2 of our closest friends. We had a fabulous time reuniting with most of the friends we hung out with during our 3 years there.

Then it came time to celebrate the husband's graduation from business school, as well as the last girls' night with the Tulane crowd. A group of us (both girls in the program and wives of guys in the program) got together often and we celebrated our last night together with a fancy meal at Clancy's. It was bittersweet since many of them are now scattered across the country.

On the day of the husband's graduation, I hosted a brunch at our old place for family and friends before the ceremony.

To get to the ceremony we had to walk through this torrential downpour. That's love.

Not sure who is more excited about this day: the husband or me!

We celebrated the husband's graduation with a wonderful trip to California.

First stop: Mendocino (aka the place where it's kosher to light a joint in public)

Second stop: Napa

Third stop: San Francisco for a night with friends


June 2010

June can best be summarized with one amazing picture. Though I should also note that the husband started his new job this month.

July 2010

In July my best friend from when we lived in Tampa came to visit, which was such a treat. I dragged her to the highlight of my summer: a Drew Brees book signing!

August 2010

We celebrated my brother's 21st birthday, which is hard to believe!

I also spent 5 relaxing days at the beach with my family doing things like eating donuts and napping (I had a great excuse at this point!)

We also moved into our new place late in the month (just in time for football season!)



September 2010

I took a work trip to Las Vegas (picture courtesy here). We also spent a lot of time on the couch watching football in our new place.

October 2010

I traveled to Georgia to visit one of my best friends from college and got to meet this handsome little guy (her son Parker, born in June).

November 2010

This is where our year starts to get a tad boring - ha! I finally started to show noticeably and we set up the changing table. Our life is already very different from January, no?

December 2010

We had our wonderful baby shower and were blessed with entirely too many gifts. Last week we celebrated Christmas with both of our families.

Overall it has been a really great year. It's hilarious to watch the progression of our year and to see the changes in our lifestyle, which has actually been therapeutic because lately I have been really sad and slightly bored. That sounds weird, I know, but I think I subconsciously knew our life was changing but hadn't really given credit to how quickly this has happened, and now that I see the progression it is easier to digest and make sense of it all.

Perfection

This morning after Church the husband and I tried a new breakfast spot, New Orleans Coffee & Beignet. I was a little hesitant to try beignets from anywhere other than Cafe du Monde, but Cafe du Monde is also a tourist trap and inconvenient and we figured it couldn't hurt to try a new place. I was thrilled to find out that these were pretty much just as good. In case you've never had a beignet, it is a deep fried piece of dough covered with powdered sugar. Not sure there's a better way to start your day than with this mouth-watering piece of perfection.


Image courtesy here

Now the Saints just need to hold on to this lead!

Blessed

We had our shower on Friday night, and we feel so blessed. That's really the only word to describe it. We feel blessed to have a baby on the way, and we feel blessed to have so much love and support during this process. That's kind of the way I've been feeling lately in general. Yesterday afternoon I went to a holiday tea at the Ritz Carlton with some friends for our annual ornament exchange and we started talking about a program here in the city that supplies bookbags of food for starving children. And I can't stop thinking about how lucky we are to have food on the table, a roof over our heads and a warm place to sleep tonight in this freezing weather. Not to be a debbie downer, but so many people in this world cannot count on those things day in and day out, so when I reflect on our shower Friday night I am really just left feeling overwhelmed with gratitude.

The house was decorated beautifully for Christmas, but the hostesses had added blue hydrangeas (my fave!), which was a gorgeous touch.





The backyard was set up beautifully - the pictures really don't do it justice, and the weather was perfect.



And we received so many wonderful and thoughtful gifts. I am really feeling kind of guilty about it all because truth be told, the real gift is being blessed with a child. I even debated whether I wanted to share some of the fun gifts we received, but I have had so much fun looking at them and putting them away that it felt weird not to.

We received some wonderful items to accessorize with, like this cute picture frame and rattle. The silver bowl is actually a porridge bowl from the hostesses and the intent is to get it personalized with his name and birth date. One of the hostesses has one for each of her children, and she puts them out with nuts and other snacks at the holidays. I thought that was a neat tradition.



We got lots of adorable blue items, all of which I love.

And these two precious outfits, which I can hardly wait to use next spring/summer.

I was thrilled about the lamp from our regsitry, as well as this adorable picture frame - it's really fun to see the personal touches coming together!

And you know we love anything and everything Saints related!

Last but not least, one of my friends sent these personalized items from this cute website. I love, love, love seeing his name! NOLA Tots has great gift items if you're in need of a gift for anyone!

We had an amazing time and I am happy to say that all of the thank you notes are written and mailed! Now I just need to finish washing and putting these items away, but that part is fun. We'll see if I think baby laundry is as fun in a few months...