Wall of Wishes

For our wedding ceremony, we asked friends and family to mail us a quote, a wish or a blessing.  A few of them whether it was a quote or a personal note, we read outloud in the ceremony (picked out a few in the final hour that night before).  When we got home after the wedding, I finally opened a lot of the little scrolls of paper that guests themselves had brought for us and I was surprised and touched by so many of them.  Here's some favorites.

"Young lovers seek perfection. Old lovers learn the art of sewing shreds together and seeking beauty in a multiplicity of patches."
-from How to Make an American Quilt

"Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and difficult as that."
-Michael Leunig

"Love is that which holds us together... love is that which liberates us."
-Maya Angelou

"In the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."
-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice.  Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet." 
-Tom Robbins

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start at soon as possible."
-Nora Ephron

"Marriage is a not a love affair.  A love affair is a totally different thing.  Marriage is a commitment to that which you are."
-Joseph Campbell

May you enjoy, together, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the warmth of each other's hands, the snores of your dogs gently slumbering, music that makes you want to dance, and the bounty of your table, both sweet and savory.

Ray Charles said "I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood.  It was a force within me." Thank you for sharing the music inside you, I hope you have found another of your parts in each other!

"The moon has become a dancer at this festival of love.  This dance of light, this sacred blessing, this divine love beckons us to a world beyond where only lovers can see with their eyes of fiery passion. They are the chosen ones who have surrendered."
-Jalaluddin Rumi

My wish for you to know:
the first stone's throw continues by stages
to grow into a rock of ages.

You're wished more than happy ever after. You're wished the kind of friendship that gets more fun the longer it lasts.

Let the happiness that you feel today stay in your hearts forever!

I argue thee that love is life, and life hath immortality.
-Emily Dickinson

We love without knowing how or when or from where. We love straightforwardly without complexities or pride; so we love because we know no other way than this.
-Pablo Neruda

and my favorite which just describes our day so well:

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the last begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly 
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
e.e. cummings

Vancouver-ation

Our honeymoon vacation to Vancouver Island in British Columbia was easily the best vacation I've had in life to date.  Sure, we were running high on the good mood of just married, but it was also extremely beautiful scenery and extremely quiet there.  The first day, we took a ferry to Saturna Island which has a population of about 300 and there were just 12 people on our ferry.  A fellow passenger suggested we follow a "goat trail" sort of hike and we found a lonely tree swing there, a vineyard that was closed for the season, and dreamy redwood trees and ocean vistas.  After that, we hired a local floatplane pilot to give us a tour from the air, and within a minute of take-off we spotted orcas in the water.

The rest of the trip we spent at a really quiet B&B in the rainforest of Tofino, a surfer town just on the outskirts of the West Coast's Pacific Rim National Park.  And on our last day before flying home, we rented bikes in Vancouver city and spent Monday riding along the sea wall and redwood forest of Stanley Park.  It was pretty unbelievable.

I've been playing with the Incredibooth app on my phone a lot this year, which turns any location into an instant photobooth - it does a pretty amazing job with blurs and backgrounds.  I also have been finally getting familiar with instagram and you can find a sample of my photos from this trip on there.

reveal

Update on the Saavedra Wedding:

Our invitations went out June 4th and I wanted to share the cover here which is stunningly beautiful. 

Not the one above, but our invite is below.

My dear friend Acacia, a graphic designer I worked with for three years in Colorado offered to make these invitations for us, a combination of instructional and celebratory - they are perfect.

We had a visit to California on Memorial Day Weekend and checked it all out, confirming we are going to have a tiny ceremony on August 31st (yup, that's this year!) and a dinner afterwards at Argentinian- flavored Estrella in Paso Robles.
I really like to think this a low-maintenance wedding -- friends who have been through it assure me it never is.  We are aiming for as small / intimate / casual as it can be for such a big deal kind of event, knowing that there are still a lot of logistics to organize when we're not able to physically be at the sites ahead of time.

At right is a photo with my mom in her unconventional "mother of the bride" dress that we both love, from Boden.  More colors and wedding ideas are on my pinterest page.

Most things are done at this stage, surprisingly... and no one will be surprised if I hint that our souvenirs may involve music and may involve stickers, and may be a bit much on the way of effort involved...

Below are some photos of the site, Leffingwell Landing on Moonstone Drive in Cambria, which we really loved for the backdrop of ocean blue.

Beach Feet (beach-feet.com)

This blog has been silent ever since we adopted Buster in January!

Well, the house is very, very full of paw steps and wagging tails now.  I think they might be spoiled.

Every morning when one of us sniffles or moves a leg in bed, around 6 a.m., the dogs know the signs and you start to hear beating tails out in the hallway.  The moment our bedroom door opens, they come barreling down the hall and tackle us on the bed with hugs and kisses.  Buster has a tendency to use his paws and 'punch' us in the face but I think he's just trying to hold on to us the way we squeeze him.  It's the most joyous benefit of dog ownership, the overabundance of frolicking love and excitement in the morning and when you come home at the end of a day.

Boston had a too-long and very cold Winter, but we started to realize in February that taking the dogs to a dog park weekday mornings would keep them both exercised and less moody.  They seem to bond when they have off-leash time together.  In fact it was only after the first time I took them to the beach on Cape Cod in March, they finally decided they were willing to share the chair in our office (which is just the size for two dogs but AS you can tell, pictured, they usually they take turns on it).

Big news that has been spreading through my family and friends is Jose and I got engaged on March 15th, just before Saint Patrick's Day.  We were out at the Cape with the dogs on my favorite beach in Brewster with no one else in sight, and the dogs were way off exploring in the marshland.  We had no camera, no combed hair, no music playing, but just hugged each other in the joy of the moment.

We are rapidly building a wedding web site (updated: beach-feet.com) with details, meanwhile here is a photo Jose took of my emerald engagement ring, a gift from his business trip to Cartagena, Colombia in early March this year.

Above, me on the same beach in Brewster, age 2 1/2 or so.

Zzzzzzzzz

Happy New Year from a very sleepy household.

Introducing our new second dog... Price!
No... Bryce?
Brewster!
Elvis!
No...
Buster!
I think Buster is going to stay.

We found this little guy on Adopt-a-Pet Thanksgiving Day, he was listed as a "dead dog walking" from a shelter in Virginia... heartbreaking.  And his face just said it all.  This is why people gotta spay and neuter!  Anyway we talked it over, we hemmed and hawwed, we worried a lot, but I posted a request for transport on the wonderful, heroic Pilots n' Paws web site, and we found several pilots willing to deliver Price to us by New Year's.

He arrived this past Saturday night and he just sat as I hugged him in my lap for the 30 minute drive home.  We were careful to let Lucy and him approach each other from the side and sniff sniff sniff, not jump all over each other.  They seem to get along but are different personalities for sure.  Lucy is athletic and agile, often jumpy and reactive.  Buster is a rolly polly softie, he just likes to play with toys for a few minutes and then curl up and sleep.  It will take some time to see how they adjust but Lucy so far has gotten mellower in the first two days.  Just to be safe, they have a balance of time together and time apart.  But we all snuggle together first thing in the morning.