Our weekend in Instagram

I'm counting the weekend as starting on Thursday night. Jonny's birthday is next Tuesday, and I picked him up from the airport on Thursday night in his birthday surprise....

I had managed to sneak around and buy a car (with lots of help from Josh and Ashley!) and Jonny knew nothing about it until he got to drive it home from the airport. My parents were also in town this week and weekend. My dad had work here, and my mom tagged along to hang out. 

We loved having them here, and my parents really took advantage of everything San Francisco had to offer, including riding our tandem through Golden Gate Park, visiting Kiva, going to Tartine FOUR times, meeting a bunch of our friends at a brunch we hosted at our house, and wine-tasting in Napa. Here's Daddy after a few tastings:

It was kind of a dreary day, but Napa was beautiful even when it was grey.

Here we are outside of Francis Coppola's estate.

I loved these lights. We had them at our wedding too, and I just think they have an awesome effect. 

All in all, we had such a fun-filled but also somehow relaxing weekend. Now my parents are back in Nashville, Jonny's on his way to Toronto, and I'm getting ready to read some of Delivering Happiness, write some very delayed thank-you notes, and get prepped for this week at work. Hope you all had lovely weekends too!

Monday Monday

I don't know how much I've shared about this on this blog, but Jonny has been traveling to Toronto every Monday through Thursday for the project he's on right now, which means Monday through Thursday, I'm living all alone.

It's been tough for both of us, but especially for me because Jonny's busy from about 8am-12am every day with this project so that serves as a distraction for him, while I work normal hours and then come home to an empty house. I've had a lot of great friends making plans with me and making sure I'm not going crazy by myself, and that has been really wonderful.

I'm really trying not to dwell on my disappointment of not having Jonny home with me and to recognize and appreciate all the blessings in my life. So, here are a few of the blessings I'm counting today:

{1} Jonny got up and left really early this morning, but I woke up to this note propped up on the vase of lilies in the kitchen.

{2} In between #1 and #2, I spent four long hours in the California DMV getting a new California license with my new name: Elizabeth Alig Carroll Price. It's a mouthful, I know, and it's caused trouble so far in both the Social Security office and the DMV. My first SS card issued said "Elizabeth Alig Carol Price" and my first driver's license issued said "Elizabeth AligCarroll Price." I know it's tricky, but I just couldn't give up a name!

Anyways, getting to this picture of my dinner, which reminded me a lot of dinners in Kenya (except the sausage might have been mutton, and Eleanor and I might have been part-time vegetarians.) It was really yummy, and I'm glad I actually cooked something. Sometimes it's hard to cook for one.

(Also, please disregard the empty coke bottle and open bag of powdered sugar in the background. Cute bloggers never have that kind of stuff sitting around when they take pictures of their houses.)

{3} The Narcissus on my bedside table that smell so so good. AND, I'm a late adopter and have a new obsession over the instagram iPhone app that I've finally downloaded that makes it easy to take cool pictures. This setting is called "Nashville" so obviously I love it.

Our bed has arrived!

After two months (yes, seriously, two months) of waiting, our bed has finally arrived today. Despite the fiasco of getting it put together with no instruction manual, it's together and made now, and I'm so excited about it.

Sometime soon, I'll take better pictures of the bed and of our whole little home and post them on this blog. 

Tahoe!

We spent a short MLK weekend with a big group of friends at Tahoe (thank you Dennis for booking the house and making this happen!) It was really great to get out of the city, see lots of SNOW, hang out with friends, and ski in sunny weather.

On Friday night, Jonny, Thom, and I drove up to Tahoe. Thom is one of Jonny's friends from London who's in the US for a few months on a project, and on our way up, we learned that Thom had NEVER BEEN TO A DRIVE-THRU! I'm still not sure how this is possible, but maybe it can be attributed to the fact that Thom is actually Belgian, not English. Anyway, Thom got to enjoy his first experience at In-N-Out.

On Saturday, almost everyone went to Squaw for the day to ski or snowboard (minus Jonny who went to Squaw to work from a coffee shop all day - boo.) Five of us, though, decided to stay home and have a leisurely girls' day. 

We took a stroll by the foggy shores of Lake Tahoe:

...met some locals to take our picture:

...caught Cait and Lyd looking cute on a boat that hasn't been used since last summer: 

...went cross-country skiing, but I didn't take a picture of us on our skis (somebody got one!):

...and Lydia and I survived our first time ever on skis! (There's a big wet spot in the middle of our picture because I made the mistake of taking my camera skiing with us and it took part in my many epic falls):

All in all, a really fun quick trip up to Tahoe. I'm hoping we'll get to go up several more times this year!

Londontown

Jonny and I spent Christmas with his family in London. My first ever Christmas away from Tennessee with my family, my first ever white Christmas, and our first ever Christmas as a married couple.

(1) The tube stop for the Prices - Harrow on the Hill

(2) Regent Street lit up for Christmas

(3) Dinner at Jonny's friend Tom's family restaurant right by Oxford Circus. This meal was amazing. Tom's dad didn't give us menus and just kept sending people out with more and more great food. He also treated us to champagne, wine, port, and amaretto and made sure both our glasses and plates were always full. 

(4) After dinner at Tom's family restaurant, Jonny decided to sing "With or Without You" with the subway musician.

(5) Trying out our self-timer with Jonny's parents at New Year's Eve dinner

We had such a great time - I wish I'd taken more pictures! Happy 2011!