Celebrating 3 years with the love of my life...

On March 15, I had the honor of celebrating my 

three year anniversary with the love of my life!

Originally, we had planned to go away that weekend and spend time skiing and enjoying each other's company but because of a dance audition, we had to cancel last minute.

Regardless, we had a wonderful night. 

We went to one of our favorite restaurants in downtown Boston, Abby Lane, and enjoyed delicious gourmet cuisine.

If you are ever in the Downtown Theater District of Boston, I highly recommend Abby Lane. Especially in the spring and summer month, I suggest sitting upstairs because they open all the windows!

Anyways, we spend the majority of our night enjoying wine and beer, talking and laughing.

Because of my crazy dance schedule lately, Brendan and I hadn't gotten a lot of time to hang out, catch up and just chat like we usually do.

He's the most understanding, flexible, supportive person I've ever met and I'm lucky to have him in my life. 

It's funny because when we hit out 1 year anniversary, I can remember thinking, "Wow, it feels more like 5 years have gone by!"

But not that it's our 3 year anniversary, I find it hilarious that now I'm thinking, "Wow, it only feels like 1 year."

The reason I say this is because it literally feels like just yesterday that I met him 6 years ago in high school. Or that it feels like just yesterday when we had our first kiss outside my house 3 years ago when we started dating.

I find it interesting that in the beginning it felt like time was going so slow and that it felt as though years and years had gone by, and now I'm looking at out relationship and I honestly can't believe it's already been three years.

It's been three years of nothing but joy, laughter, support, love, listening, affection and any other synonym I can think for any f these words.

My only wish is that more people in the world got to experience what I experience with Brendan everyday. 

I love him to the moon and back a thousand time and I always will.

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

25 Days of BlogMas | Day 25

Thursday: December 25, 2014

Merry Christmas! 

Today was a wonderful day! 

My whole family slept in until 11 am and I woke up to the smell of pancakes and bacon. 

Usually my mom makes pancakes every Sunday but Christmas is the perfect excuse to make pancakes during the week. 

After breakfast, it was time to open presents!

It's funny because now that we are older, the presents under the tree look different. It's not big boxes full of you sets, DVD players, tvs or sterios. 

And some Christmases are different than others. In the past it's looked empty under the tree, but this Christmas is the first in a long time that we've had gifts spilling out from both sides. 

Regardless, it's never about the presents! It's about the company. 

So we spent about an hour opening ll our gifts. 

My parents got me a MacBook Pro (which doubled for a graduation gift too)

My brother and his girlfriend got me a Vera Bradley curling wand holder and a coach name tag lanyard. I also got tons of chocolate and little stalking stuffers. 

There was wrapping paper, bags and fissure paper everywhere, but this picture doesn't do it justice. 

After opening presents, the cleaning started. 

Some houses do spring cleaning, but my house does Christmas cleaning. 

And guess who actually cleaned the whole house; vacuuming, mopping and dusting included? ME? Because my parents were in the kitchen cooking for 4 hours. And, that's because we had company coming over for dinner... Brendan and my brother's girlfriend. 

My family consists of me, my brother and my mom and dad. The one aunt and one uncle I have living in the United States (actually both within 15 minutes from my house) my dad doesn't talk to. Besides that, all my relatives, ALL of them, live in Portugal. 

I guess you could say that my parents, specifically more my dad, have a hard time letting other people into my family. The fact that my dad came up to me this past weekend and asked me to invite my boyfriend to Christmas dinner really meant a lot! I'm not the type to invite my boyfriend either without my parents being fully excepting of it. 

So, I was excited! 

Brendan was too! He knows how closed off and reserved my family can be. He's so understanding too. He knows it's not him, it's just the way my parents are. When I told him he was invited to Christmas dinner he was ecstatic!

He came over around 4:30 and we were eating by 5:30. 

We enjoyed honey ham and seafood casserole. 

There was also asparagus and baked potatoes. 

Brendan's personal favorite was my dad's rice. I think he could have eaten the whole pot!

Then after dinner we dug right into dessert! 

Completely 100% home made, my mom made a three tiered desserts. Yellow egg custard on the bottom with Portuguese cookie crumbles sprinkled on top. Then chocolate mousse is added to make the middle later. Finally whipped cream is the too layer. Usually we roast some almond shaving and sprinkle them all over but because Brendan has a tree nut allergy, we substituted almonds for chocolate shavings.  

This Christmas was wonderful. I spent it with both my family and Brendan and I couldn't be any happier! 

The rest if the evening, I fooled around with my brand new Cannon T5.
Here are some of the pictures :-) 

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

25 Days of BlogMas | Day 11

Hello World!! 

I woke up this morning trying to put finishing touches on my portfolio. There were some things I forgot to add the night before. 

Right before leaving my house to go student teach, I got a call from the classroom aid. The heater in the school broke so the building was freezing! They were plannig on sending all the kids home and she told me not to bother coming in. 

Yes! Day off for me!!

I was so excited!

So I went downstairs, made a huge thermos of coffee and worked on homework in my room until 2 pm. 

Sadly, I had to get ready for work. 

The after school kid were a little out of control so I was over being there the moment they walked in. I wasn't in the mood to yell or argue with any of the older kids. 

After work, I got drinks with my co-worker and a girl that use to be our co worker. 

I enjoyed a Watchusett Blueberry while we caught up with eachother. 

When I do work the afterschool program, usually I wait with my coworker until his ride arrives to pick him up. He's Reyelt one of my closets friends and we always talk about his girl problems. I try to offer my advise but does anyone actually ever listen to their friends? Lol

So a majority of the night was spent filling in our ex-coworker on his shenanigans and all the crazy things the kids in after school say or do that she's missed since she left. 

Mid-way through dinner we did Wu Wu shots and eventually ordered a round of margaritas and then a pitcher of beer. 

I love hanging out with them because there aren't any type of walls up. You can say whatever you want and there's no judgement. I love all my friends equally but it's interesting (at least to me) that I can't let my guard down as much with my other two groups of friends. 

I dropped him and her off and I headed home. Brendan got out of hockey around the same time so I actually ended up driving to his house instead of mine. 

I had to steal a kiss :-) 

Exhausted from all the eating, drinking and talking, I fell instantly asleep as soon as my body hit my bed. 

It's amazing how even though I didn't have to teach in the morning, I was still dead tired by the end of the night. 

Hopefully I have more energy tomorrow. 

Until next time, 

XOXO Ines

25 Days of BlogMas | Day 2

Hi there world! 

I woke up again this morning as sick as a dog. My body is finally catching up with all the stress I've been putting it under;  I'm just glad my soar throat is gone. Now I have a stuffy nose and headache to deal with all day. I might not look sick, but I definitely am! 

Something is floating around amongst the first grade....

Day 2 of my takeover week went really well. My classroom teacher was out again so, although I love having her there and she is the best support system, it was definitely more relaxing to know that I didn't have her eyes on me the whole day as I taught. 

With the first day of December comes celebrating and learning about December holidays. 

Yesterday I introduced The Nutcracker advent calendar to the whole class. We opened window one and today we got to open window two. It took them until today to really understand how an advent calendar worked. 

I really love the one my classroom teacher has because it tells the story of the nutcracker over the 24 days of the advent calendar. Each window has a miniature book; so every day you find out more to the story. I love the concept!

After dismissal, instead of heading to work, I went home for a few minutes then drove to class. Class was the LAST thing I wanted to do today. I actually ended up leaving because I had a pounding headache and by this point, I was also much sicker!

As soon as I got back home, dinner was ready. My mom made steaks and I couldn't help myself; I had to dog in. At least I still have my appetite! 

Sadly, because tomorrow is my observation day, I had to write up my lesson plan and email it to my professor. Homework, or really any work, was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to be a couch potatoe until I was too sleepy to sit up straight 

It took me a couple of hours to write up my lesson plan. Between typing, watching Elf and procrastinating, it took way longer than it should have. But atleast I did it, right?!

Well I'm off to put pjs on and get in bed. I just took a big dose of night time cold medicine so I'm hoping it kicks in soon!

Try not to get sick!!

Until next time, 

Xoxo Ines