dripping with passion

november in palo alto is oh so lovely. the foliage finally pops and the weather is so dreamy (70ish with an occasional delicious blustery rainstorm) and the world just feels nice and cozy. we've been organizing our little home, eating comfort food for dinner (i trick the boy by making stuff healthy), cuddling a little too long on chilly mornings and then running through the crunchy-leafed streets of our neighborhood in the soft early light. brittany gave us this gorgeous pie pan and an amazing pie cookbook for our wedding, so we got together last week and made sweet potato pie. i have to say, it was really delicious! november! pie! brittany, michelle and i have re-started our weeknight downton abbey viewing parties at michelle's cozy house in menlo park. we get pretty into it (there were some tears this week) snuggled up on the couch. the boy has been applying to hundreds (literally!) of jobs – it’s a quite extremely stressful time for a finishing phd student. the

with all the wedding stuff going on, i’ve missed some of my autumn in the bay area traditions (like fleet week , dia de los muertos , hardly strictly bluegrass , and the half moon bay pumpkin festival ). but one thing i made sure not to miss was my annual napa valley fall foliage bike ride {previous years: 2010 – 2011 – 2012 – 2013 }. since i had veteran’s day off of work, the boy and i headed north last tuesday to cruise through the vineyards. we ended up not having much daylight, and the sky was gloomy with clouds, but the colors and vistas were spectacular and the ride was exhilarating.     i’m so happy to be married to someone who loves the earth a lot and doesn’t get annoyed when i freak out about outrageously beautiful nature. isn’t riding a bike just the most lovely simple pleasure?

a couple weekends ago, we went back to utah ... because we'd left a lot of things behind! - gifts our guests had brought to us at our wedding reception. we have been so amazed by how generous people have been in sending and bringing us presents to help us build our home and life together. and i have to say, it is pretty fun to have christmas x100! we spent all day that saturday opening gifts, sorting things for storage, returns, or to stuff into suitcases, and going to several different stores to "balance" our registries. a busy and happy day! on sunday we got to go to music and the spoken word  at the tabernacle on temple square. the beauty of the music left both my mom and i in tears. (the boy enjoyed it too.) we also got a bit of snow at my parents' house in park city, which was exciting for us californians. it has been a blast setting up our house with all kinds of great kitchen gadgets and the like. we are leaving this saturday for a week in hawaii and

one night in late may 2012, i noticed a voicemail on my phone from this boy i knew a little – ian wright. i’ll never forget how a smile stretched across my face as i listened to his message in my kitchen. “ i was just wondering if you wanted to go paint at the beach with me on saturday! ” i wasn’t sure if i was interested in dating this boy, but i was definitely interested in an adventure at the beach, and i was quite charmed by ian’s invitation. we found a random path off highway one and trekked with easels, art supplies and a cooler full of food to a deserted beach. we sat on the sand and had a picnic and discussed important, significant things. we talked so long and hard that it was nearly dark by the time we remembered the object of our adventure (to paint ) and the wind had picked up a little so we didn’t end up using the easels we’d carried through the sand. ever since that day, we’ve talked about going back to that same beach and actually painting. last sunday, exactly on

i know three wedding receptions seems like a little… much . but the boy’s parents wanted to celebrate with their friends in texas, and since the bay area has been home to the two of us for several years, we wanted to celebrate with our friends here.   the boy is a counselor to the bishop in our local congregation, so he has developed relationships with many of the people at church, and we thought it would be wonderful to bring together those awesome folks with our coworkers, students, the boy’s professors and advisors, and dear mutual friends from our single days (many of whom could not come to the wedding in utah but who have seen and supported us through our whole wild journey). we kept the post-wedding festivities pretty simple and really enjoyed the opportunity to see and thank so many good people in our lives. the boy and i hired our close friends michael and melinda to help us put on our palo alto reception – michael coordinated all the food and melinda all the decor. wow, we