Platt family visit

Earlier this month, the Platts came to visit for a whole week! We are so lucky that they decided to spend their vacation time on us!

We had such a fun week of spending quality time with all three of them. It was so fun to come home from work everyday to a smiling Sydney waiting to greet me!

Our big outing of the week was a trip to Santa Monica. Our first stop was Sprinkles, the gourmet cupcake bakery in Beverly Hills. And can I say, wow! We arrived to a line out the door of about 20 people all waiting for their very own cupcake.


We happily joined in and waited while debating what flavor to choose from. 30 minutes and 8 cupcakes later, we were back in the car on the way to lunch. It's great being an "adult" - dessert is always better when eaten first!


My favorite was definitely the dark chocolate(3), but we also sampled vanilla (1), peanut butter chip (2) and the Cinco de Mayo special, Choco Loco (4). It was amazing! The best news is that there is a Sprinkles in Corona Del Mar, so I'll be visiting frequently!

We then headed to The Counter. Adam's brother-in-law Andy found a list of "Burgers You Must Eat Before You Die", so we checked the first one off our list at The Counter. They had the build-your-own-burger style, so we each got to choose our bread, meat, toppings and sauce. Yum!


We rolled out of the Counter and on to our next stop at the 3rd St. Promenade for some quality shopping where I had an amazing find! Are you curious? This is too good to squeeze into another blog, so look for this item to have it's own entire blog coming soon.


We finished the day with a stroll along the Santa Monica pier - it was my first visit, so I'm glad to check that off my Southern California tourism list!

What a fun day!

Behind on Blogging: Beach Bonfire

The makings of a great night:

Yahtzee

A couple taking engagement pics on the beach with a rain umbrella

Volleyball

Beach Bonfire


Brian O (happy birthday!!) on the grill making dessert quesadillas (nutella, bananas, yes please!!)

Life is good!

Adventures in graphic design

Though I know hardly anything about it, I'm starting to get into some graphic design projects which I'm having a blast with. There's a lot to learn and it's definitely overwhelming, but I've enjoyed the little bits that I've played with. Here's a recent project I did for my friend Katie to announce tha arrival of her daughter Annabelle! We took an announcement that she liked and modified it to fit her style - what a fun project!

Introducing!!!

I'm super excited to share my latest blogging (and life) adventure with you all - Mary Rosenbaum Photography! Check out my new photoblog here to see some of my photos.

I am officially now open for business and starting to build up my personal photo studio here in CA. It's a little overwhelming but very exciting! Please link to my new blog, pass it on to everyone you know, and tell all your friends to call me for their weddings, portraits, etc. Thanks for your support!

Uh-oh!

Last week I accidentally poured lemonade into my iBook. Not on . . . into. The left side of the keyboard is rather crunchy now, but so far its still going strong.


This reminded me of freshman year in college (all my good stories start like that) when Shannon poured a whole vase of water into her Mac (remember the days when Macs were purple and teal? it was one of those - we hated it and had no idea what to do with it - a little ironic since now I'm one of those girls who won't shut up about hers). We were both sitting on our beds, and I think she accidentally kicked it over. It was one of those slow motion moments:

Vase . . . tilting . . . water . . . pouring . . . still going . . . still going . . .

I saw the whole thing happening but was totally frozen and couldn't make myself move to try to stop it.

I hope Robin and Gary don't read my blog because I don't think we ever told them that one. Whoops.

Nashville 6: Family time

Adam and I spent Sunday and Monday morning hanging out with my family - all of my siblings came in town for the occasion so it was great family time! We started Sunday with a surprise birthday lunch for my brother at . . . you guessed it . . . J. Alexander's.


My whole family was there including my grandmother and Adam's cousin Amy - she's one of Daniel's best friends at college - oh the tangled webs we weave.



Sunday evening we went on a family outing to Franklin Bowling Lanes-turned- big and fancy acitivity center. We played 4 games in a row and stayed out until almost midnight. Needless to say, thats a little uncharacteristic for my family!! But it was all worth it as Adam bowled his personal high of 172! Not too shabby!


Monday morning I had my first experience at Monell's, and can I say yum! It's family-style dining and great southern food!

We closed our Nashville trip with a Rosenbaum family birthday to celebrate Joann's big birthday coming up that starts with a 5!! We had a Joann-friendly meal for all the kids! Yum!



We had such a great trip to Nashville but were also happy to be back home to CA!


Our trip home went smoothly and even included a Bucky Covington & twin siting. I was going to have Adam take my picture with him but I couldn't tell which was actually him . . .

Nashville Part 5: Recovery

So I survived the marathon! I met up with Miriam and Melissa (who broke 2 hours - amazing!) after I finished next to the Coors Light table. That's right, they were handing out free beer and Krispy Kreme afterwards. I just can't get my mind around that . . . I couldn't even look at the tables of bananas and apples afterwards, much less try to think about consuming something like beer and donuts immediately after crossing the finish line. It seems like maybe not a wise decision to put your body through two opposite extremes like that all at once, but what do I know? It was just my first time.

I've discovered that after my "long runs", I tend to turn into a mute for a good hour or so. So you can imagine that after THE big run, I was pretty worthless for about 2 hours. Luckily I had Sallie's chicken salad and chocolate cake (blog coming soon about the cake - I promise!!) to revive me!

After relaxing some, we had a big treat to look forward to - meeting Samuel Albertsen!


Shannon and Josh came into town for the weekend and we got to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon with them. Shannon and Josh are such great parents already and it's so apparent that Samuel is well-loved! I couldn't resist the photo op, as usual, so here are a couple of favorites that we took.




What a great afternoon of friends! We swung by Moe's on the way home and Rebs came and met us for a few minutes. It's never enough time but I'll take what I can get. Reba and Moe's - what a combination!


We finished up our evening with some quality niece time! Sydney's daddy and Aunt Mary got to compare marathon stories while continuing to chug the Gatorade, and we got to help Sydney through her bed-time routine! It's the small things like this that we miss out on!

What a great day!

Nashville, part 4: The Big Race

1st is the worst,
2nd is the best,
10,321 isn't too bad for your first marathon.

Thats right. I am proud to say that I finished the Country Music 1/2 Marathon in 10,321st place. Considering that about 20,000 people ran it, I feel pretty good about it!

Melissa, my cousin Miriam, and I woke up about 5am on Saturday to head downtown for the big race. I started getting nervous about it the night before at dinner. I'm not really sure why - it's not like I didn't know what was going to happen. I knew we would just wake up early and run for a few hours!!



I knew Miriam and Melissa would be running at a much faster pace than me - we were all separated into corrals (I know - herd us all in there, why don't you) based on our estimated finish time. Miriam was in Corral 8 while I was in Corral 26. A little bit of difference there! But they convinced me to start up with them, anyway, so all three of us started together in Corral 10. And literally, I kept up with them for maybe 15 steps! Really I just didn't want them to feel badly about me beating them, so I let them go ahead. Here's Melissa getting after it:



When we started it was gloriously overcast and cool - what a difference that makes! The first few miles really were fun (though not as fun as I make them look in this next picture!) - I couldn't believe how many people were running and how many fans came out to watch.



It's amazing what a difference it makes to see familiar faces cheering you on!! I had a whole crew out to cheer me - literally Adam's whole family came out to cheer for me and Adam's bro-in-law Andy who ran the WHOLE marathon! Go, Andy! They camped out on a whole stretch of sidewalk with strollers, posters, friends, cousins to cheer us on! It was great motivation to look forward to seeing them, or at least great motivation to not walk so I wouldn't be embarrased in front of them! Thank you, thank you for your support and enduring a long and early morning for us!



Things got pretty ugly for me around the 9.5 mile point. The sun came out and the course was through the middle of the city which was tough with little to no shade and a lot more long hills than I had anticipated. I had felt semi-prepared for hills going into the race but as it turns out, the ones I've run here are steeper and quicker as opposed to the really long hills on the course. So overwhelming to look ahead and just see runners going up for as far as you could see! Ugh! Here I am around mile 12, I think, running with what Adam calls my Raptor Arms.



By the end, my main motivation to keep running was just so it would be over quicker! Even at the very end, I could see the 13 mile mark and knew that the finish line (13.1) was just around the corner, but still just wanted to quit even at that point!

So, the happy ending to this story is that I finished and even was under my anticipated time of 2.5 hours, finishing at 2:24:57. My overall pace averaged out to 11 minute miles, which I'm pleased with considering how slowly I felt like I was moving at the end! YAY for crossing the finish line!

Nashville, Part 3

Friday we woke up and anxiously awaited the arrival of my friend Melissa who came up from Birmingham to run in the half-marathon. We've been virtually training together for several months now from afar!

After loading up on carbs at Pei Wei, we headed downtown to meet our friends Rachel and Jonathan for a quick photo shoot. They're getting married in a few months and so I took some shots of them in downtown Nashville in an area that is quickly being refurbished into one of the coolest parts of town, The Gulch. Here's a couple - look for a few more of these on my up and coming photoblog - more info coming about this soon!


Friday evening we headed down to officially check-in for the marathon at the Health Expo. It got me really excited to see everyone there getting ready. I considered dropping out after collecting my offical 1/2 marathon t-shirt (why else did you think I signed up?) but figured I might as well finish the thing since I already made it this far. The main entertainment of the Expo included A)looking for people who appeared to be in worse shape than us and B) watching my brother work at the Beef Council booth! Good times!

We ended the night with more carbs at our family favorite, J. Alexander's and headed home to turn in early since our alarms were going off at 5am the next morning!

Nashville, Part 2: You're a Superstar

Thursday night, we went to Matthew's play Once On This Island where Matty played the rich son of a hotel-owner who falls in love with a peasant girl and then breaks her heart by marrying another. Then the peasant girl turns into a tree.


Matty was excellent, just as we expected. It was so fun to see him performing on the same stage that we did in high school with the same directors that we worked with and loved. It was totally worth the trip home to see him perform and hear him sing with his "friend" Rachel, who played the female lead! They were great together!

Going back to Nashville, thinking 'bout the whole thing

Thanks to David Mead for that fabulous song (Nashville) and thanks to everyone back home for making it such a great trip for us!

We always look forward to our trips back East to spend time with much-missed family and friends and this one had been much anticipated ever since Adam's brother Matthew landed the lead in his high school musical.

The first trip highlight was, clearly, a trip to Zoe's. Oh, blessed chicken roll-ups with a side of rice. How I love thee! And how lucky I am that this Birmingham native has migrated to Nashville so I can enjoy it every time that we're in. And it's even better to experience it with a precious niece!


After Zoe's we headed to our Alma Mater to visit Uncle Matthew and pick up tickets for the play that night. I'm not sure how much Matt appreciated half of his family showing up unannounced outside his English class but it was fun for us! We reminisced about old times and bumped into some old friends who showed us all of the latest additions to our high school - I could barely even find my way around!

More t0 come . . . thanks for reading!