FUN-FILLED ANNIVERSARY WEEKEND

To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, we planned several days of fun activities in San Diego and the surrounding area. We feel so fortunate that we get to live in beautiful Southern California as newlyweds! Our first event of the weekend was something I have wanted to see for a long time -- a Keith Urban concert! He played in Los Angeles at the UCLA tennis center, and it was actually a great location because it was a more intimate setting than most concerts we've experienced. It was a gorgeous evening to be outdoors, and his performance definitely lived up to our high expectations. Before the concert, we made time to stop at the new Magnolia Bakery for some delicious cupcakes (I first fell in love with these cupcakes at the original NYC location). Thank you, Diana, for letting us know that a location opened in L.A.! The buttercream frosting was just as incredible as I remembered.

On Saturday, we went sailing on the Pacific Ocean with our good friends, Diana & Chase Newman. (They were celebrating Chase's birthday.) It was extremely relaxing, and it allowed us to see the harbor and the ocean from a completely new view. We absolutely loved it!

Beautiful homes on Point LomaLook closely...we saw a dolphin being trained to detect things like underwater mines!

We enjoyed a special anniversary dinner at Firenze Trattoria on Saturday night. It had a very romantic Tuscan atmosphere, and we had a great time reminiscing about our wedding weekend and how much our lives have changed in one year. I have to say that this was possibly the best dinner date I’ve ever had with my husband! Gotta love mushy romantic conversation over a delicious meal with the love of your life. :)

Kevin has been anxious to go to San Diego’s Wild Animal Park since we moved here in October, so I took him there Sunday and surprised him with tickets to a special Photo Caravan adventure. The caravan takes you on a two-hour up-close and personal tour of animals in their pseudo-natural habitats. The tickets for this adventure were a bit pricey, but thankfully they were totally worth the money! I was crossing my fingers that Kevin would love the experience, and he enjoyed it just as much as I did. During the tour, the animals walked right up to our caravan so we were able to feed giraffes and rhinos! Yikes – see the terror in my face below! What a memorable way to mark one year of marriage. Overall, we spent about seven and a half hours at the park, and we took over 800 photos. (Truthfully – I actually took more than that, because we filled a huge SD card just three hours into our time at the park, so I had to sit down and delete a couple hundred photos before we saw the rest of the park!) I think it’s safe to say I/we love our new DSLR camera. To see more of our park photos, visit our shutterfly page at http://theobriens725.shutterfly.com/.

Yes, feeding them was as scary as it looks. Our guide told us to drop the apple slice into the rhino's mouth AND touch the rhino's bump for good luck. I found it rather difficult since I was so focused on keeping my hand from being eaten! How CUTE is this baby elephant?!?!Remind anyone of Aslan??

I had to add this one to see if Kevin is reading our blog. ;)

One thing that we loved about the park was how active the animals seemed to be compared to zoo animals. Here's an example: This photo is significant because the huge stick that Kevin is holding was THROWN by the gorilla at the crowd of people on the other side of the railing! Look at the distance between the gorilla and Kevin! There was a sign that asked visitors not to stare at the gorillas because they don't like people to stare at them in the same way we humans don't like others to stare at us...but, come on! We're there to see them! Plus, how do you not stare at these incredible animals interacting with each other? We ended our first anniversary by eating some of the top tier of our wedding cake and watching our amazing wedding video (yes, Kevin received major points for sitting through every minute of it, yet again.) The cake tasted pretty yummy for being one year old!

Okay, there’s one more thing I have to mention, because it was the most special part of the whole weekend. The traditional first anniversary gift is paper, and Kevin gave me the most sacred and thoughtful gift ever – our wedding vows, written in calligraphy, in a beautiful frame. I can’t imagine a more precious gift, and I will cherish it for the rest of our lives. In case you’re wondering, I did not give an equally precious gift! My gifts to Kevin were the photo caravan tickets I mentioned above and a magazine subscription. I guess Kevin is now the sentimental gift giver in our relationship!