As of Late

Ya'll. This month has been crazy busy. I can't believe I'm starting to type up Peyton's FIVE month blog post. Before I jump into another "how Peyton has changed" post, I thought I would catch everyone up on the recent happenings in the Smith casa.

The week between Christmas and New Years, Ryan started a new job! While it has been beyond amazing to have him home with me and Peyton for the first few months of her life, he was really looking forward to getting back in the professional world and starting on a new career path. The only downside to this new job is less time spent as a family of three. I am learning the true meaning of "stay at home mom." Definitely not as easy as I thought it would be (although, I'm not sure why I ever thought it would be easy!) We are adjusting well though and Peyton has really been so amazing these past few weeks- minus a little teething fussiness here and there.

So what else is new?

Do ya'll remember my 101 in 1001 challenge? Really? Me either. My mom reminded me yesterday morning that I have some serious work to do on that little list. As a Christmas gift this year, my parents got my brother, Ryan, and I tickets to the Falcons/Saints game. My brother decided to bring my dad along as his date so my mom stayed back to hang out with P. We drove into the city together a few hours before the game and had lunch at a little restaurant inside the CNN center. Afterwards, we walked to the Dome, making it just in time for kick-off! (We would have been there earlier, but apparently you're not allowed to bring purses into the stadium unless they're clear so we had to walk all the way back to the car to drop my purse off!)

While the game was exciting, the Falcons had a pretty rocky season and ended it with another loss. Fun stuff. At least I can cross something else off my list!

Last weekend, Ryan, Peyton, and I made our way down to Georgia Tech to watch the yellow jackets battle it out in the pool and on the tennis courts. One of the perks of moving back to Georgia is that we get to finally attend some sporting events, which we haven't really done since graduating 5 years ago! Before getting to the pool, we stopped for coffee at Einstein's to meet up with my college coach, Marty! It was so great seeing him and introducing him to Peyton!

Once we got to the pool, we found seats and pulled Peyton out of her stroller, only to discover that she had (wait for it....) ANOTHER blow out in her car seat. We were stubborn and didn't want to change her into her non-GT outfit that I had packed, so we spent a solid 30 minutes in the family bathroom washing and drying her clothes under the hand dryer. By the time we finished, we got maybe 15 minutes of viewing time in before little miss decided she was hungry and wanted to be nursed. Just another example of being on baby's time and not your own anymore. Oh well.

We went to lunch at Tin Drum in Tech Square with Ryan's parents and then watched the tennis match for a few hours before leaving to get dinner with Lisa and Andy at 5 Seasons! It was a whirlwind of a day, but so fun to be back on our old stomping grounds!

Well..that's pretty much it for these past few weeks! I'll be back soon with a 5-month update on sweet P. Guys, she has changed so much in the past month, it's hard to believe!

101 in 1001: #98-99

In an attempt to update my 101 in 1001 page, I realized that I never wrote about mine and Ryan's trips into Boston to cash in our 2nd anniversary gift from my parents, tickets to the New England Aquarium and a Duck Boat tour! 

Our original plan was to do both things on the same day, but we chose to go on the Friday during Spring Break as a reward for finishing my PPA binder for my Master's degree. We didn't have much problem getting into the city, but parking was a pain and the line to get INTO the aquarium was IN-sane. I guess going during spring break wasn't the best idea... We ran out of time to do both activities in the same day, so we came back the next week before we moved to go on the duck boat tour! I'm glad we got to do both of these things before we moved away from New England, but I would only recommend the duck boat tour to people visiting the city. Ryan and I liked the aquarium okay, but taking a ride on the duck boats was awesome! We loved listening to the witty remarks from our tour guide while riding around the city before plopping down into the Charles for a mini boat ride. 

Thanks Mom and Dad for a very clever and thoughtful anniversary gift!!

#59: First Annual Scarf Swap

This Holiday season, I finally decided to try my luck at hosting a girl's night/Christmas party! I've wanted to host a scarf swap for some time now and thought that this could be the perfect White Elephant/Dirty Santa gift exchange just in time for Christmas!

Last Friday was the big day! Everyone invited brought some sort of appetizer or dessert to share and a wrapped brand new scarf to swap. For my contribution, I made a Christmas cranberry punch, THESE ham and swiss sliders, and THIS hot chocolate cheesecake dip.

Christmas Cranberry Punch

Ingredients:

• 1 qt. Sparkling Water
• 1 qt. Cranberry Juice 
• 1 cup Lemon Juice
• 1/2 cup Sugar 
• 1 Orange
• 1 cup Strawberries, halved
• 1-2 handfuls Fresh Cranberries 

Directions:

In a bowl or serving jar, combine lemon juice and sugar, mixing well until sugar is dissolved. Add sparkling water and cranberry juice and stir. Add halved strawberries, cranberries, and thin slices of orange to the mixture. Serve cold. 

Hot Cocoa Cheesecake Dip

We spent the first couple hours of the party eating and mingling before getting down to the scarf swap portion of the night. Since there were 11 of us, I cut out slips number 1-11 and placed them in a mason jar, asking each guest to pick a number.

Once each person had their number, number 1 went first (obviously). The rules were that you could either open a gift or steal someone else's scarf, causing them to have to open another gift. You couldn't open a gift and then choose to swap with someone.

After everyone had either opened or stolen a scarf, we all had in our possession a beautiful new piece of neck accessory to add to our collections!

We spent the rest of the night hanging out, getting to know each other better, and devising a plan to get to Vegas in 2015. #somuchroomforactivities

I am so glad a group of my closest friends were able to get together for this girls night and feel so blessed to have these girls in my life! Thanks for a successful Christmas party, ladies!

 And now I'm going to close this post out with a final picture of our tree (because why not?!) Ryan and I are heading to the airport in just a little bit for our flight to Atlanta!

Home, here we come!

Christmas Cards 2014

Happy Winter Solstice! I'm SERIOUSLY looking forward to some extra sunlight from here on out!

 

This year, I could not be any happier with how our Christmas cards turned out!

 

 

My only experience ever making and ordering Christmas cards was always through CVS, but earlier this year I noticed a killer Groupon for 50 cards from Staples for $10! That's seriously cheaper than our cards were last year! I jumped on the offer and quickly passed it along to my parents and in-laws. Ryan and I made the cards online with some of my new favorite pictures from this past year and they were ready for pick up the next day! My only regret is that we didn't order 100 for $20 instead! 

 

To address the cards, I used a combination of two different washi tapes to make the envelopes just a little more festive...that is until I ran out of washi tape. (sorry friends!)



 Christmas Cards 2013
 

Three more days until Christmas and one more day until Ryan and I finally catch a ride back to Georgia!! Happy Holidays!!

 



730 Days

730 days ago today, Ryan and I got hitched! 24 months ago, with our friends and family by our sides, we vowed to love and stand by each other's side for the rest of our lives. TWO years, people. Two years!

This past year of marriage has brought with it another set of new experiences and adventures. Some highlights: We made our first trip to Europe together. We (Ryan) received a couple promotions through work and (me) completed six out of seven classes towards a Master's degree. We hosted five sets of family members and friends up in Boston. And my personal favorite: We became Aunt Sarah and Uncle Ryan, welcoming little Leah into the world! 

These first two years of marriage together have been full of amazing experiences and we have made so many memories I will cherish forever. I am so excited to see what the years ahead have in store for us! Without getting too much more sappy on the old blog (Ryan, you know how I feel about you!), I'm just going to share how we decided to celebrate these past 730 days together, a couple days early.

Since our anniversary fell on a Monday this year, Ryan and I pushed our celebration up to Saturday night. Ryan, being the stud that he is, won an award through Dow that gave us a $100 gift card to the Chart House, a fancy pants restaurant in Boston.

To make the most of our trip into the city, we went in early to walk around and admire the city decked out for the holidays and do a little ice skating in Frog Pond! Once we parked, we walked over to Frog Pond since we thought it would be a good idea to ice skate before dinner. However, someone had other plans for us. When we got to the rink, the line to get inside the gate was ridiculously long. We stuck around for a couple minutes before deciding it would be a better idea to try to come back after dinner and hope that the line would be shorter. With our new plan, we set out to grab a taxi over to Quincy Market.

We spent thirty or so minutes walking around the Market, picking up a couple extra Christmas presents before our dinner reservation at 6:45. The Market had a special light show every thirty minutes, which was pretty cool to watch, but made picture taking by the giant tree tricky with the crazy flashing lights! We tried to ask people to take our picture a couple times, but could never seem to get all the lights on for a picture. Oh well!

Our dinner at Chart House was unbelievable. The service was so good and everyone made us feel super special for celebrating our anniversary with them. Once we were seated, a VIP sign was placed on our table and at least four or five different people came over to check on us and wish us a happy anniversary over the course of our meal.

Even the menus they gave us were specially printed, wishing us a happy 2nd anniversary! Such sweet little touches made our experience so wonderful!

For our meal, we started with crab stuffed mushrooms, followed by coconut shrimp for the Ry-Guy and a short rib and scallop dinner for me. Everything was D-E-LICIOUS!

As a compliment from the restaurant, our waiter brought us out a ridiculously tasty mud cake with coffee ice cream and an oreo crust. It was so large that the table next to us congratulated us on finishing the whole thing before we left. Win!

 With full bellies, we made our way back to Frog Pond to try our luck at ice skating again. Fortunately for us, there was no line, so we walked right through. The rink closed at 10, which gave us a good 40 minutes to play around on the ice. It had been YEARS since either Ryan or I had been ice skating. Needless to say, we were both pretty unsteady in our skates to begin. While Ryan seemed to get the hang of things pretty quickly, I tended to stick closer to the wall for the majority of our time on the ice! However, I am happy to report than neither of us fell on our butts the entire time!! Ice skating success!

Ryan on the move! 

Hanging out on my wall... 

Overall, our night was pretty similar to our first two years of marriage: extremely fun and full of new adventures!

For our actual anniversary tonight, Ryan and I are spending the night at home with some homemade spaghetti and meatballs and a bottle of champagne. Cheers to many, many more anniversaries, Ry!

Read about our first anniversary here.