three years.

Today marks three years of marriage to the man I love. When I've taken a still moment this week to reflect on these first few years of being married I've been filled with warmth, gratitude, and a safe sense of belonging. I feel proud of the person he is and how faithfully he's lived out his vows. I feel smiley at the hundreds of occasions that exist where he has made me laugh really freaking hard. I feel excitement for the chapters, homes, adventures, growth, and children (Lord willing) that await us in the years ahead.

I can never quite figure out how to do justice in writing to the swollen sense of happiness I have in our marriage. Simply said, I really love doing life with Finn. I'm deeply thankful for the friendship, trust, grace, and home we've built with each other in these first years. It just keeps getting better and better.

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summertime hello.

A few fun things from around the web!

1. What it costs to eat at every 3-star Michelin restaurant in the world.

2. Genius Picnic Bag on my wish list. 

3. Consider this yet another reason I dream of being gal pals with Kristen Wiig. 

4. Can't wait to visit the giants in Mariposa Grove with my parents this weekend!

5. Grown men reenact conversations with a toddler. 

6. Rent in SF is actually the worst. 

7. Lowland Hum plays at the Garage. Their album Native Air will be available two weeks from today. I already have it and man is it good.

8. I will be playing on this beach in Costa Rica with my handsome husband love in just 2 weeks! 

Hope everyone is having a full and happy summer : )

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and the answer is....

. . . . . .

Dubai!

How exciting is that?! We are thrilled and can't wait to fly Saturday morning. Finn's co-founder and sales exec will be joining us Sunday and we'll all spend a week there. I can't believe it. Also, tomorrow is my birthday so this surprise adventure came at quite the opportune time. It's funny that the same thing kind of happened last year too. Thanks for the comments and sweet text messages - I'll be sure to share photos!

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back with a surprise...

Hello wonderful people,

Mr. Finneran and I have some very exciting news (it's not a baby or a puppy so you can all exhale). Finn just found out he'll be traveling next week for work and (even more exciting) I'll be joining him. This coming Saturday, we will be leaving for a week long trip to one of the destinations below:

     1. Cape Town
     2. Dubai
     3. London
     4. Rio de Janeiro
     5. Oslo
     6. Hong Kong

Please place your votes for where you think we're headed. Then tomorrow, I'll reveal which one is real (because let's face it, building suspense is way more fun than just telling you). 

Whoever guesses correctly gets a postcard from the secret location while we're there! 

. . .

going to the chapel.

We are boarding a plane first thing tomorrow morning to head east for Jacob & Alison's wedding. I've been looking forward to this January weekend for months and am so excited it's finally here! Three days filled with celebration, dear friends, thankfulness, toasts, wild dancing, and seeing one of my favorite friends enter into a most beautiful blessing with her Jacob. It's going to be a wonderful weekend. Here we go!

photo by Sarah Der Photography

(PS - remember when Alison asked me to be her bridesmaid?)

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this thanksgiving.

I loved Thanksgiving this year. We fit 10 people in our little apartment and had quite the feast together. No one at our gathering was from San Francisco, so we were all away from our families and normal traditions. Spending the day in each other's company was wonderful and fun, plus I thoroughly enjoy throwing a little party. Everyone pitched in and brought awesome food. During dinner, people were spread about our apartment - some at the table, some on the sofa, and a few troopers even ate in camping chairs. The meal was superb and after we ate, everyone sat around the living room and talked for hours. Thankfully, the wonderful Carly Mask took some beautiful photos of the evening. Have a look if you'd like!

Cool Things About Our Thanksgiving:

1. My cousin Nick, who I've spent pretty much every Thanksgiving with for my whole life, actually moved to SF this year too. He joined our festivities and while our families ate together back in NC, we spent the day together 3,000 miles away. Life is funny.
2. These friends can cook. Oh my goodness the food was insanely good.
3. A few of our guests were Belgian and this marked their first Thanksgiving ever! Describing the historical conception of Thanksgiving and how it relates to our modern traditions is kind of hard. They had a good time nonetheless. Of all the new foods, they liked the green bean casserole and sweet potato casserole best. 

4. I am so thankful that we have friends to spend a Thanksgiving with. Hallelujah.

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farewell movember!

Today is the last day of Movember. Finn has been growing out a scraggly moustache all month so I feel that today calls for some celebration, at least for my sake. The whole affair would be less repugnant if the moustache could be joined by a beard but the rules don't allow that. Just a lone, squalid moustache. And tomorrow it all comes off. Away with you unsightly (though comedic) facial hair! See you next year!

The moustached members of the SF TwitSpark office. 

The cartoony one is Tandy, who is female.

. . .

to outgrow an office.

We spent last weekend running errands and building tons of furniture for TwitSpark's new office in the Financial District. They've outgrown their current one, which makes me feel slightly like a proud parent. On Saturday night, we were at their new space with Davy, Fe, and Sam assembling shelves and chairs until 1 am, getting everything ready for the team to move in (it was actually really fun, we ordered in Chinese and listened to music while everyone worked). 

There were so many boxes!

_______________________________________________________

Last night, the team came to see the space for the first time. We had beer & snacks and played with the nerf guns & Sega Genesis (!!!) that Davy & Finn got for the office. They were intentional in making it a fun and comfortable place for everyone to work and hang out. They even have a stocked fridge and mini cereal bar. 

The view from Finn's window.

Laughing at his own expense.

That's Katie Tandy, the genius writer for TwitSpark. She could be a stand-up comedian. I love her.

Office essentials.

This is from the Jambulance in Allen Mask's music video Right Now!. I'm gonna sell it for $20k one day.

The TwitShark. 

Afterwards, I got dinner with these 5 fine people at House of Nanking, which is dangerously close to the office.

I am so proud of this team. They are a bunch of intelligent and good-natured individuals and all get along really well. And they work very hard. When Finn and I moved to SF 7 months ago, TwitSpark was just him and Davy in a single office. This move makes me realize just how much they've grown since then.

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lake tahoe: 3/3

Aside from our drive around the lake, an evening at the movies (seeing Wreck-It Ralph), and a fancy dinner date, not much was planned or scheduled for our time away. We tried to see the sunset every night and other than that, our days were wide open for time on the porch and hanging out by the fire. We spent time talking about all that's come to be since our last anniversary (quite a lot we realized) and wondering what might change by next year. Life with Finn is an unknowable adventure. I love it. I look forward to our anniversary trips down the line and all the changes and refinement that will happen in the years between them.

Sidenotes:

1. Sadly we did not see a bear, though I certainly tried.

2. Is that pinecone impressive or what?

3. The house we stayed in was amazing. A friend of TwitSpark lent us his vacation home for the weekend and it was ballin, for lack of better words. Leather sofas, a huge bathtub, a TV (!!!), and a king sized bed! Their living room and kitchen were easily bigger than our whole apartment. If this house hadn't been lent to us, our trip to Tahoe probably wouldn't have happened so we are very thankful. I hereby declare that if we ever have a vacation home, we will lend it to young couples to pay it forward. 

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lake tahoe: 2/3

We spent one of our days driving the entire way around Lake Tahoe, which takes about 3 hours. My most favorite of all our various stops was the beautiful Emerald Bay. It's known for its vibrant colors and it has the only island in all of Lake Tahoe, in case you were wondering.

We had lunch high above the bay on some sunny boulders and although we just had bread, jam, and BBQ chips, I felt like a king! What a view. After lunch, we hiked down a windy trail to the edge of the water so we could see its "emerald" color up close. I think we stayed down there for an hour and a half, just looking around. It's of the most naturally beautiful places I've ever been. 

Several people warned us about the steep hike back up the trail but it turns out that San Francisco hills have basically made American Gladiators out of our lungs and we strolled up casually and actually had a conversation the whole way up. We felt very proud of ourselves at the top - the grueling SF landscape has apparently paid off.

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lake tahoe: 1/3

Our anniversary trip in Lake Tahoe was the best. We spent 3 nights away in an area called Incline Village on the northeast side of the lake. It was our first California excursion since living here and spending a few days out the city was refreshing and fun. I love nature and miss its presence in our city life. Getting away for weekend trips is more of a challenge since we don't have a car and our generous friend Jeff was kind enough to lend us his for the whole weekend. Thank you Jeff! Our time away was filled with relaxing by the fire, watching sunsets, playing frisbee, napping (that one was mainly me), and generally enjoying the incredible natural beauty by being outside. The whole weekend felt like one giant exhale and I'm so thankful we were able to visit, especially at such a beautiful time of year.

There was a also a very nice frisbee golf course (what providence!) half a mile from our house so we played a few times over the weekend. I wish I could say I totally smoked my competition, but that would be a bold lie.

It turns out my frisbee skills have diminished over the past few years. This kept happening....dang bushes.

On one hole, I temporarily got my act together and we tied. Our reactions are pretty telling.

More photos coming soon!

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camping for food.

We are at another First 100 Chick-fil-A Campout today, racking up free food. This time, we're with a big group of people and it's so much fun! We have our own little tent city and the weather is chilly but sunny, perfect for being outside all day. The boys are playing the most intense game of 4 square I've ever seen, literally. That's Finn on the bottom, I'm not even sure how he even got like that. 

And I'm thoroughly enjoying myself because:

a) I like the people we're hanging out with. Everyone in the group is from North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, or Texas and it's just fun to be around people from the south. Living out here, it's a rare occurrence. 
b) I'm using my ultra-cute new Little Mermaid pouch (shout out to my mom). 
c) I packed lots of snacks.
d) I love tents. They're basically forts for adults.

A year's worth of free Chick-fil-A shall be ours tomorrow morning! We just have to weather the cold night ahead, which should be a breeze (I've got wool socks galore). It's a good day! 

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