First Year in Love

Uh uh uhm so uh…and so began a beautiful bond that is so not Hollywood worthy, but in my mind much better. A wasn’t at all what I expected – in fact, I tell him that if it had been any other time in my life, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance. But dating A has been every bit as wonderful as I wanted a relationship to be, and more. He’s so kind, funny, values similar things, and is so so so good to me. God definitely had a better idea of what would be best for me. He always does.

Disclaimer – please do not mistake this romantic relationship for a fellow food critic partnership. That being said, this is basically just a gallery of food pics 🤣 

2019.05.04 // sometimes, clumsiness can be a blessing. A forgot to lock his car so while I was waiting for him to come back from helping someone move, I got to chill in his car

               

2019.05.04 // A likes to brag that his desirability peaked in college when a girl gave him her number while he was playing guitar. I reluctantly have to agree that he is definitely the most attractive when he is in his musical element

2019.05.11 // We had to part ways for three weeks less than a month into our relationship. Cue evenings in the bathroom texting when everyone else in the cabin was already sleeping (in all fairness toward me it was like 8PM haha)

2019.05.30 // coming back after three weeks out of town to a surprise in my room! This was such a first experience in my life, and I have to say that I like it. The funniest part of this is that my roommate has a huge version of this same plushie, and when A came into the room to drop off the present, he got super confused when encountering giant avocado, which evolved into embarrassment of how small his own offering was keke

2019.07.15 // teaching A to be friends with his neighborhood cats

2019.07.20 // Coordinating outfits for the first time at a wedding! Can you tell I’m excited? And then I was devastated because he left the tie at a friend’s house before the reception -.-

2019.08.04 // Triple date with a huge, delicious homemade dinner and a choral session

2019.08.08 // A lovessss mangoes. So naturally I took him to Scoopzilla for the mango sticky rice ice cream yummmm~

2019.08.10 // Meeting Daisy is one of the joys of my life since A and I started dating. A understandably gets jealous haha

2019.08.15 // Wicked with the siblings and A. This show remains fabulous.

2019.08.17 // Lunch with the family and A. 

2019.08.19 // Trying to cook more together with cheap new customer Hellofresh boxes. Finding out that the so-called “crema” was just sour cream plus water and making it for everything just to make life fancier

2019.08.23 // A likes fancy recipes like panna cotta with his two favorite things in the world – mangoes and raspberries – on top

2019.09.03 // Greedy greedy A with his benedict PLUS a waffle all for himself. I think he had to fast that day because of a physical exam so he was understandably starving

2019.09.13 // A seeing me off with Panera (was supposed to be my beloved Rubio’s but they were closed!!!!) and froyo before my drive to Sacramento for the weekend.

2019.09.19 // fellowship scavenger hunt and we got to be on the same team! of course A somehow managed to find cookies to munch on during the game

2019.09.23 // Musical A expanding his repertoire of instruments with an electric (edit: a bass) guitar

2019.10.02 // Wednesday evenings during busy season mean dates at Caffe Latte with, well, lattes. A bear to match my bear~

             

2019.10.05 // Half Moon Bay pumpkin patch with a humongous hay maze!

              

2019.10.07 // Celebrating A’s birthday. I gave him this homemade Loch Ness plushie that he named “Ness”. Other birthday elements included his favorite sushi and finally going to Colormemine to paint each other mugs.

2019.10.31 // halloween at church! A in classic fashion got his costume on that day. The best part was probably getting eggrolls from King Eggroll

2019.11.15 // our personalities came out when a friend gave us a free burger coupon from the Counter. A was getting extremely confused by all of items I was topping onto our burger (for value’s sake of course), and I told him to just take the weird items out and eat them separately ahahaha. I definitely think we got our $14’s worth out of this meal.

2019.12.20 // A laughed at me when I came to Sizzling Lunch for the second time and tried to order something on the menu that they don’t make anymore AGAIN. I couldn’t tell you why but I may be the only person in the world who finds Italian style pasta on a sizzling plate super appealing.

2019.12.30 // a special video call with A while he was in Japan with family

2020.01.11 // Sometimes A just wants to be fancy, so we randomly decided to dress up nicely and eat yummy fish at Pacific Catch (ughhh, that citrus miso salmon is my jam)

2020.01.26 // A fell in love with Sweet Honey’s mango pomelo sago so we come here multiple times a month. sadly, he does not enjoy tofu pudding which has been the singular most tragic loss in our relationship thus far (I’m not complaining)

2020.02.03 // A is having a cathartic moment after finishing Bojack Horseman. This is an extremely accurate depiction of him.

2020.02.05 // Leadership team building over pottery and lunch and I snuck A as my plus one

2020.02.14 // A puts his best foot forward for our first Valentine’s Day with homemade chocolate strawberries and flowers. 

2020.02.20 // Cute cousin perks!! A’s mom was hosting a cooking lesson with T so they were making sushi and homemade fruit roll-ups and chocolate popcorn balls. This family is so sweet!

2020.02.22 // Triple bowling date where A dragged me down after bragging about our bowling prowess lol. We placed second with a total score of 170 – I got 120 of those points.

2020.02.22 // Going to a bougy cooking class where we didn’t even really cook…plus it was SO expensive. But I’m not complaining here haha. And we did an encore for A’s parents to make the investment worth it. Minus the flambé steak… 

2020.03.07 // One area that we fall on the opposite ends of the spectrum is in creativity. I’m always so amazed to see A at work creating new things or making his own spin on things, like this rap/beat he created by clicking random things for less than ten minutes. It stands out to me particularly because I am so lost and so fearful when it comes to making something out of nothing.

2020.03.20 // shelter in place begins, and so do the silly Facebook video calls

2020.04.17 // I went crazy during shelter in place and made a whole tribe of loch ness plushies. Here’s the whole family

thank you for one year, A ❤️

with some patience, diligence, and understanding, here’s to many more