Lara turns 24 :)

I had a very nice birthday, thanks to my family and friends. I had a very nice display of cards from family members! Steven took me to my favorite restaurant for dinner and I ended the night with Cocktail Club with the ladies in the neighborhood!

Birthday tiramisu!

As part of the celebration we went to an 80's cover band concert! My shoes were the best part of my outfit, 3 1/2 inch heels were killer!

Let the spring garden projects begin again!

It seems like each weekend we always find a spot in the yard that we want to spruce up! Last weekend it was the flower bed next to the shed. For starters we called the stump grinder to dig up the roots from an overgrown boxwood. After a lot of hard work in the sun we decided to go with roses and hydrangeas.

I've always wanted to have a vegetable garden so this year I said "why not!" We started out with 3 inch seedlings. Along the railing there are onions, watermelons, cucumber, basil, peppers and tomatoes.

This is after 2 weeks. Tomatoes in the back, peppers in the yellow pot on the left, beans in the pot on the right, watermelon and cucumber in the terra cotta pots.

Winter Holidays

First December snow

Cali is still a little unsure of how she feels about snow

"Tacky Sweater" holiday party

Family photo attempt 1 of 8

Family photo attempt 2 of 8

I love visiting my cousins!

Standing in front of the tree at the Grove Park in Asheville 

Some love for Frosty

The famous gingerbread house competition

A little emergency under control. Can't beat a pink cast!

Cali turns 1

We celebrated Cali's first birthday, March 17th of this year! Yes, she is a St. Patricks day puppy! I know it's been a long time since I've posted an entry, it is one of my New Year's resolutions to keep more updates coming! Here are a few pictures of Doodle.

Exploring some of the presents!

Trying to pose nicely with some of the presents!

Here she is right before her birthday, enjoying some sunshine on the deck!

Since this picture was taken, we've moved the furniture around to accomodate some new pieces. We're not sure how she managed to get herself to this position! She needed a little help from one of us to get down.

This is Penny, one of Cali's favorite friends! They like to run off leash in the soccer park on weekends together!

This was taken at the D'Antonio's at Christmas

Day 1 of Cali living with us

Cali and friend Sophia playing in the river

Cali and Sophia and Spencer (Cali's half brother)

Starting to wear out from a fun play date

Racing to see who gets to the river first

House Renovations Never Seem To Stop!

If you were to tell us a year ago that we would still be decorating, painting, renovating projects for the rest of our time spent living on Stuart Ave, we probably would have laughed. We have now come to terms with the fact that we will never stop fixing something. Our latest project was painting the 2nd guest bedroom. The room is a light yellow, you probably can't tell because the pictures were taken on my cell phone.

Happy Halloween!

We had a huge day on Halloween! The day started out with a nice walk around the neighborhood with the hound but ended short because we ran into some friends who live down the street. Cali made a new friend and Tempa and Austin are new to the neighborhood so we let the dogs loose in the backyard and chatted about the trick or treaters that we were expecting!

Cali and Davis really like each other and they only live a block away!

After the play date we had a puppy birthday party to go to! Cali met TJ and Molly, Karen and Morgan Percy's poodles. They enjoyed running around and having "snicker poodle" cookies.

Cali was an angel for Halloween this year! 

I love that we live around the corner from an elementary school so trick or treating ends around 7:30. We spent the night with our neighbors Andy and Lucy sitting outside in the front with toasted pumpkin seeds and a couple bottles of red wine enjoying the kids walk down the street!

We interrupt this marriage to bring you Redskins football

October 3, 2010 marked our 1 year anniversary. Steven and I celebrated by hitting up Scott Stadium in Charlottesville for a little college football then we packed our bags and heading downtown to The Jefferson where we stayed and had our reception. We had a wonderful dinner in the hotel's restaurant and was greeted by gracious gifts from friends of a bottle of wine and dessert which made it more special. Out wedding planner managed to get us into the suite that we stayed in a year before and had dessert and champagne in our room for us. That was Saturday night the 2nd. Sunday, the 3rd (our actual anniversary) was a football day (a usual in the D'Antonio house) so our real anniversary was spent watching the Redskins game and eating wings. I practiced my domestic skills on Monday night with a romantic home cooked dinner.

Ashley and I picked great seats! Luckily we are HUGE VaTech fans and FSU killed UVA so it was a good day for us!

My bouquet and Steven's boutonniere survived and provided a centerpiece.

The BEST paper gift a girl could ask for! Spa day!

Green house + Green thumb

It's been forever since we posted pictures! We have completed the front yard work including power washing and planting! The D'Antonio's came up for a weekend to help with the manuel labor! It was a long weekend but worth the sweat!

We only went through 16 bags of mulch

The Queen of pulling out ivy!