woah. can’t. believe. its. february! One of my goals for the new year – not resolutions, never resolutions I can’t keep them! – is to start getting personal on my blog. Time to catch you all up on why I have been radio silent since mid-december… get ready ya’ll this is about to get personal…

The hubby and I flew down to Brazil at the end of December to surprise his family for Christmas. Almost his entire family knew we were coming except for his mom and dad hehe 🙂 We flew in on a Saturday and surprised his parents at a BBQ. It was awesome ♥

We spent 13 days basking in the sun, soaking up time with friends and family and enjoying a very warm holiday. It was so nice to get away! We both honestly had a hard time coming back especially when we landed in NY on our way home and were hit with freezing temperatures and snow that threatened to leave us stranded at the airport – lucky for us we ended up making it home although there were times when I thought we would have to spend the night.

I wanted to share with you guys a few of my favorite images from the trip 🙂 I had this great big plan of making a book that documented our vacation but I gave up on that idea about halfway through the trip – I honestly just needed to stop working and give myself time to relax.

my sister-in-law and I tried making a carrot cake – we failed the first time by accidentally leaving the top of the blender in the blender while it was on but succeed the second time 🙂 it was delicious!

family ♥

and we decided to go to the zoo one day only to have a bird poop on me… not one of my finer moments lol

my favorite image from the zoo – I love how it looks like a double exposure but I shot the monkeys through glass #nophotoshoprequired 🙂

Oh Brazil… how wonderful 🙂 Spending Christmas and New Years with my new family was a blast – I wish I could go back!

So back to reality… ever since we arrived home I have been busy – like super busy. Not just busy with work but with life. Since last year the hubs and I have been looking at houses. We knew our apartment lease was running up at the beginning of this year and instead of spending another year in a space we have definitely outgrown, we decided it was time to invest in a place of our own. Before we left for our trip we had looked at a few homes but they were less than ideal – so instead of really trying hard to find a place we distracted ourselves with Christmas 🙂

We decided to really hit the real estate search hard at the start of 2014. So we did. And WE FOUND A HOUSE 🙂 Woo hoo! If all goes as planned, we should be closing by the end of the month on our first home! We will finally have a place to call our own and a yard for the pups. Yes, I did mean to write pups because in January we also adopted another dog 🙂 Icy is our newest addition and it seems that her and bear have become quite good friends…

I fully understand the meaning of when it rains it pours… i love how busy this past month has been!

Not only are so many exciting things happening in my personal family but also in my photography family as well! Big welcome to the Sellers family, Kaplan family and Leo who were my first customers of 2014 – blog posts with their images coming soon 🙂

I hope all of you have had a wonderful start to your new year! Be on the lookout for more coming your way soon!