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Weekend Vaca with Boo in NOFO

The weekend in NOFO felt like the kind of pause you don’t plan, you just fall into.

The sky was a wide, soft gray—nothing dramatic, just a ceiling of cloud that made the water look steadier and more honest. We stood close at the edge of it all, shoulder to shoulder, letting the wind do what it wanted with our shirts and our hair, letting the moment be unposed even as the camera caught it.

There’s a comfort in getting away with someone you love and realizing you don’t have to fill every second. A short drive turns into a different rhythm: slower meals, longer looks, quiet jokes that only make sense to the two of you. NOFO has that effect. It doesn’t demand a checklist. It just gives you room.

I keep thinking about how places can hold feelings the way old houses hold heat—subtle, stored up, and easy to miss until you step back inside your own life. This trip wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It was the simple relief of salt air, an arm around a shoulder, and the ocean stretching out like a reset button.

If you want the little details and reactions, the Instagram comments tell the rest of the story.

The Spa is Mine

The Spa is Mine.

It’s a small claim, but it feels true in that quiet way—when the water is glassy, the sky is a clean, wide blue, and the whole yard looks like it’s holding its breath. The pool sits there like a bright square of calm, bordered by sun-warmed concrete and a strip of green that looks too orderly to be accidental.

From this chair, with my legs stretched out and a book open in my lap, the day becomes simple. There’s no rush to get in, no need to prove anything. Just the soft sound of water shifting against tile, and the steady light that makes everything look a little newer than it is.

I like how places can feel lived alongside you. Not loud, not demanding—just present. A backyard can be a kind of home for your thoughts, the way an old house can hold seasons in its walls. Out here, summer doesn’t announce itself; it settles in.

Maybe that’s all “mine” means today: a brief pocket of stillness, claimed without conflict. A moment where nothing is being remodeled, improved, optimized, or explained. Just a body in the sun, a page turning, and water waiting patiently nearby.

Rain Dance for Arizona on Bell Rock Trail

The sky over Sedona looked heavy, the kind of gray that can’t decide if it’s going to give you shade or finally give you rain.

On Bell Rock Trail, the red earth felt wide and open, stretched out like a stage. I stood there with my arms thrown up, half-joking, half-hopeful, doing my best rain dance for Arizona. The rocks held their rust color under the clouds, and the whole desert seemed to pause and listen.

Hiking out here has a way of making you pay attention to small shifts: wind changing direction, a cooler breath of air, the way distant buttes fade when mist drifts through. It’s not the same as a summer storm back home, where rain arrives loud and certain. This was more like a question hanging in the sky.

I don’t know if the dance worked. Maybe it’s enough that it made me stop and look around, to feel how big the landscape is and how quiet you can get inside it. Even when the ground is dry, you can still sense what it’s waiting for.

If you’ve ever walked Bell Rock Trail under a brooding sky, you know the feeling: that the desert isn’t empty at all. It’s just patient.

Family bonding time

The photo catches a quiet kind of closeness—two dads stretched out together, the world narrowed to a couch, a soft black-and-white filter, and a puppy tucked in like a warm punctuation mark at the bottom of the frame.

There’s something about moments like this that feels bigger than it looks. No big plans, no perfect lighting, no reason to perform. Just the small weight of an animal settling in, the familiar angles of someone you love beside you, the unspoken agreement to stay still for a while.

Bonding can sound like an activity, like something you schedule or work at, but more often it’s these ordinary minutes that do the stitching. A shared look at the camera. An arm draped where it always ends up. A dog’s sleepy eyes, half-trusting and half-curious, as if it’s learning the shape of this home in real time.

Family bonding time doesn’t need much space. It just needs a little quiet, and the willingness to be there—together—until the day feels settled.

Two dads cuddling with puppy, framed in a simple snapshot, says what a lot of words can’t: this is what “home” looks like when it’s alive.

Great Dinner in PA with my cutie

Dinner in Pennsylvania always seems to arrive the way weather does—quietly at first, then all at once. We stepped out into the evening with that small, earned kind of happiness: full plates behind us, a little warmth in our cheeks, and the sense that the night didn’t need to be anything more than what it already was.

I keep thinking about the way places hold you. A restaurant table, a familiar street, the soft clink of silverware and glass—ordinary things that still feel like a marker in time. It’s the same comfort I find in old houses: not perfect, not staged, just lived-in. You can almost hear the room breathing around you.

After dinner we paused for a photo, standing close like we always do when we’re not trying to make a moment out of it. Two patterned shirts, an easy smile, the dark shutters framing us like a memory you can step back into. The window behind us caught a little glow, as if the inside of the building was still holding onto the evening.

I don’t remember every bite, but I remember the steadiness of it—how good it feels to share a meal with someone who makes the world feel a bit brighter and a bit bigger.

Great Dinner in PA with my cutie, tucked away like a small keepsake.

Weekend Art Culture

Weekend Art Culture is the small miracle where the city loosens its grip for an hour and lets you breathe differently. You step off the sidewalk and into a room that feels tuned—quieter, brighter, like the air has been edited.

In front of Roy Lichtenstein bedroom pop art, I watched a bedroom turn into a kind of diagram: crisp outlines, punchy color, dots that pretend to be texture but also refuse it. A lamp becomes a statement. A bed becomes a rectangle of intention. Even the shadows look like they agreed to behave.

The funny thing is how familiar it all is. You recognize the furniture the way you recognize a dream after waking—almost yours, but not quite. The tidy scene feels domestic and distant at the same time, like home remembered through a window.

Museums always return you to yourself in little ways. The soft scuff of shoes on wood floors. The pause of a stranger who stops beside you, both of you measuring the same image, both of you briefly quiet. And then you leave, back into the city’s noise, carrying a cleaner line of thought—something bright and flat that makes the real world look newly textured.

Presidential Photobomb

There’s a certain kind of quiet inside the Lincoln Memorial—stone and echo, like a room built to hold its breath. And then, of course, there’s us: bundled up, leaning in close, trying to fit a whole day into one small frame.

We snapped this photo and only later really noticed how perfect the timing was. Lincoln sits behind us in his permanent, patient stillness, looking like he’s tolerating the modern ritual of the selfie with the same calm he gives everything else. It feels like a photobomb, but the slow, presidential kind—less “gotcha,” more “remember where you are.”

Washington, D.C. has a way of doing that. You walk around with coffee in your hand, chatting about where to go next, and suddenly you’re standing in front of something you’ve seen your whole life in textbooks. The scale of it doesn’t hit you all at once; it comes in pieces: the cold air, the marble, the softness of light on white stone.

We came for a photo, but left with that lingering feeling that some places are bigger than their monuments. They’re built out of memory, and the quiet pressure of history, and the strange comfort of being very small for a moment—together—while something enormous sits watching from the background.

30th Birthday with original CM team

Thirty is a funny kind of milestone. It doesn’t arrive with a drumroll so much as a quiet click—like a door latching behind you—and suddenly you’re standing in a room that feels both familiar and newly lit.

This one was spent with the original CM team, gathered close beneath big gold balloon letters that spelled out a simple, bright permission to celebrate. Drinks in hand, we held still for a moment in front of a wall of books, the background hum of a home around us—shelves, frames, small evidence of everyday life. The photo catches that in-between feeling: polished enough to mark the occasion, relaxed enough to be real.

I keep thinking about how time folds people together. Work becomes friendship without anyone making an announcement. You look up and realize you’ve collected a small history—shared late nights, inside jokes, the steady rhythm of showing up. It’s not loud, but it lasts.

If birthdays are supposed to measure anything, I hope it’s this: the warmth of familiar faces, the comfort of being known, and the kind of joy that doesn’t need much more than a room, a few friends, and a little gold light bouncing around.

30th bday Bubbles with Devon

Thirty feels like a small threshold you don’t notice until you’re standing in it—hands wrapped around a glass, the room soft with warm light, and everything glittering just enough to make ordinary moments feel ceremonial.

For this 30th birthday, the bubbles did their job: they slowed time down. The gold streamers behind us caught every flicker and turned it into a kind of weather—shimmering, patient, and a little unreal. Devon and I leaned into that brightness, shoulder to shoulder, holding our drinks the way you hold a quiet wish before you say it out loud.

I love parties most for their small details: the clink of glass, the half-second of eye contact before a toast, the way laughter rises and then settles again. The camera grabs one frame, but the night is really made of movement—people drifting in and out of conversation, music in the background, a thousand tiny celebrations happening at once.

Thirty isn’t a reinvention. It’s more like a new coat pulled on from the laundry room—familiar, worn in, and suddenly meaningful when you realize how many seasons it has already seen.

Here’s to gold light, good company, and the simple kindness of marking time together.

Silly 30th Bday with the Boys

Thirty feels like a small threshold you step over without noticing until you look back and realize the room has changed.

This photo catches the moment before the night blurs into laughter and louder music: three friends pressed close, coupe glasses raised, a gold fringe curtain behind us catching every bit of light. It’s silly on purpose. The kind of silly you can only commit to when you’re surrounded by people who have known you long enough to not ask you to be anything else.

Birthdays can make you count things—years, plans, what’s next—but nights like this pull you back into something simpler. The warmth of a crowded room. The shine of cheap decorations that somehow feel like celebration. The easy, familiar lean-in for a photo, the kind that says we’ve been here before and we’ll do it again.

I keep thinking about how memories live alongside you, the way a house creaks in winter or how a coat becomes part of a routine. Friendships do that too. They quietly collect in the background, then show up all at once when you need a reason to toast.

Silly 30th birthday with the boys—gold, laughter, and the kind of night that leaves you grateful the next morning.

30th Bday with Bae, My 2017 Birthday Celebration

| #birthday #party #boyfriendswhobirthday

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| For my 30th birthday in 2017, I was told I had to “do it big”. A concept I have never really been into for my birthday celebrations. However, being the big three zero, I decided to give it a shot.

End of Summer Cuteness – New Jersey Shore

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| #minigolf #boyfriendswhobeach #avalon

| Angel and myself ended the summer with a trip to the New Jersey shore with my parents (Donna and Ray).