a spring afternoon

Today was a lovely, lovely day spent with one of my dearest gal pals, Adie. I've known Adie for about seven years now- she grew up with Hank, and her boyfriend (of almost 10 years!) is one of Hank's best friends. Adie and I have in a way, watched each other grow up and into our now-woman selves...and that's pretty awesome. I adore her; she has the most infectious spirit and zest for life, and she's one of those people that is a ray of sunshine no matter what the weather. I am so grateful for our friendship, and the longs walks and talks that have been a part of my life for so many years. Today was no different, and we spent a few hours meandering around town, walking around the square, eating treats and sipping on our favorite coconut tea. Today though was warm, so of course the occasion called for it to be iced. I enjoyed a delicious fruit bar made from applesauce and juicy berries, Henry basked in the sun infused shade, and my legs were treated to a walk about our small and beautiful town. The weather was beyond pleasant, and it was one of those days where the sky seemed a little bluer, the emerging spring buds on the trees a little fresher, and even familiar blocks appeared new. We walked, we talked, I fell in a little more love with this place I call home. Hello, spring!

{please forgive the instagram photos again, my d-slr was too cumbersome for our walk!}

p.s. Here are the answers to the questions from my "Around our home" post from earlier today: the plates are from Anthro, my bird jewelry tray is from World Market (it was supposed to be some sort of bathroom tray), the drawing on our kitchen shelf is by tattooer Cory Lenherr- it's actually the piece on my left side ribs, and our duvet is from IKEA. Thank you all so much for all the kind words! I'm excited to eventually do a whole house tour; quite daunting to imagine, but one day it will happen! Have a beautiful day.

Today is Tuesday.

Today has been a fun day spent with my little guy, following a great evening spent with my dear girlfriends!  Last night Amber and Adie came over so we could have a little "bachelor party," and indulge in some silly, wonderful reality television!  Hank cooked us dinner- a delicious yellow curry with veggies and tofu- and then we flipped on the tube to rot our little brains away!  If you didn't know, I have a not-so-guilty pleasure of watching The Bachelor or Bachelorette every season (Adie does too!) so we tried to convince Amber to love it right along with us.  And, we may have been successful!  Let's hope.  The night was super fun though- just sitting around and laughing at all the insanity on the television screen was just what I needed, from the weird vampire girl to the zig zag part, to the Rockette and the expected musical number, it totally made my night. I'd say my top girls so far are definitely Emily (the Southern Belle) and the gal who got the first impression rose.  Have I lost any of you yet?! hahaha.  So yes, it was a really fun evening and I ended up getting to sleep pretty early.  Henry slept so well last night and I actually woke up feeling rested!  Amazing. We spent the day playing on his activity mat, napping (well, he did), and reading some of the books he got for Christmas.  It's pretty neat because even though I know he isn't necessarily understanding what we're doing when we read, I can tell he is taking in all of the pictures and listening to me as we work through the book.  I read somewhere that it's good to read babies books with repetition so right now we've been sticking to Eric Carle which has a lot.  I might eventually go crazy from hearing The Very Hungry Caterpillar a thousand times, but for right now I'm doing okay.  Later in the day we took a little trip to Costco too, so I could get Hank some razors and pick up a few other miscellaneous items like berries and a big box of Annie's Bunny snacks (love them).  I'm still a little nervous to go out and do things on my own but every time I do a little more of the fear goes away.  Oh and speaking of Hank, I know I've said it a million times but nothing is more beautiful to me than seeing my husband and son together.  Melts my heart every time.  He'll actually be home from work in thirty minutes and right around this time I start a little count down in my head...twenty minutes, ten minutes, five minutes, one minute!  I can't wait until Henry will be big enough to really get excited for Hank to come home every night.  I remember that feeling when I was little- my sister's and my face pressed up against the window until we saw my Dad's car pull in the driveaway. Then: "Daaaaaaaaaa-dddddddy!" running toward him with open arms as he walked inside.  I can't wait for that.  So yes, today was a good day, I got a lot accomplished, including being put on hold for about thirty minutes with our insurance company. Fun! ;) 

I feel like a have a million and one blog posts I can't wait to share with all of you, and again, I appreciate all of the responses to the survey this morning.  In case you missed the edited version of that post and were confused when there wasn't a link, the survey site I used only allotted me 100 participants, and that filled up within thirty minutes or so.  I apologize to those who couldn't take it, but I definitely got all of the information I was looking for as far as how you found this blog, when you visit it, etc.  It was incredibly fascinating to hear all of the feedback, and I actually have a few things to share in regards to it, so I'll be doing that tomorrow, along with a recipe post from my friend Sarah, which marks the very last guest post!  

I hope all of you had a great day today- I'll leave you with some photos! xo

Friends and fun

Wednesday was a wonderful day- our dear friends Erin and Jonathan came up to Prescott for a visit. We've all been friends for a long, long time, and it's always so wonderful to be able to spend extended amounts of time with them. They got in around 4pm, and once Hank got off work we all went to Hugo's for dinner (of course). Afterward we spent the rest of the night downtown, playing Wii, and laughing so much. It was perfect. I took a million little Flipcam videos, so I stuck them all into one long video. It's nothing special, but you'll get a little look at Prescott and our silliness. I am loving this little camera, and I'll be taking a lot more videos in the future.

I also wanted to add that I had to take my formspring off of my blog for now- there's absolutely no way I can keep up with all of the questions! Maybe one day I'll put it back up when I have more time.

xoxo

12/30/09 from Danielle Hampton on Vimeo.

Here are some photos-

JP and Madeline, she loves him


Hugo's session














Hank tried to make cookies but it turned into one big cookie...delicious though!






Wii bowling!


downtown




me!


Adie!


Amber!


Erin!

Saturday, day and night

I spent the majority of the day today relaxing and doing errands. I got a lot accomplished and I feel great about it. My wonderful friend Adria was also in town today from Los Angeles, so we had a fun time hanging out for awhile this evening! She came over and we chit chatted for a bit, and then her, Hank and I walked over to the light parade. In our usual small town fashion it wasn't the fanciest parade, but it was definitely cute and festive! After we got sick of standing around in the cold we went over and got dinner at Hugo's. Delicious!

In other news, I am heading to bed now. I'm so proud of myself, as it's only 12:30am! I've been going to bed well past 2am lately and that is something I definitely do not want to get in the habit of doing. Yuck. I really prefer to go to bed early and get up early! Tomorrow morning the gym opens at 9am and my plan is to be there when the doors open. Goodnight everyone!

Here are the few photos from this evening!







my bowl of beans! YUM




yes, this is a snowman made out of popcorn! :)

Slowly but surely setting up our living room!

part of our living room- slowly but surely setting it up, originally uploaded by daniellehampton.

Today was so awesome! I am grinning ear to ear right now because I just got to video chat with Adie and I am so happy. She just got a Macbook and we did good ole IChat. It made me so, so happy to talk with her. Hopefully we will both be heading to Santa Barbara soon to spend a long weekend with Amber, and I can't wait.

Work today was really, really great for some reason. All of my kids seemed to really be interested in my lesson and my heart felt really full all day. I know that sounds silly but sometimes I have days like this where I just feel like I am doing exactly the right thing with my life and all is as it should be in my little world. It's a great emotion. So, yes school was satisfying and overall a wonderful day. After work I headed to a dinner party celebrating Brooke's birthday and ate way too much, hence me laying in bed now instead of working out at the gym. Yuck. I feel gross and I will hopefully find the motivation to get up and go running when I conclude this entry. We'll see though.

Tomorrow is a half day, I have lunch plans with Jennifer and then dinner over at Jean's house. Busy busy. Oh, this picture I included is a photo I took last night but couldn't upload on that crappy, stolen signal. Now we are officially hooked up here which is awesome. I took that photo as we were getting our living room put together. It shows about half of the room, to my left in the mirror is our couch and a big window. We still have a lot more to hang and organize, and I also need to get another couch for the other wall, but it's coming together slowly but surely, and I'm loving it.

So, now I guess I'll head to the gym...begrudgingly, but I know I'll feel great when I'm done. Another plus is that I almost said, Happy Monday, but then realized that it is in fact Tuesday. Awesome.

I love Prescott!

Today was such a wonderful day and reminded me yet again how happy I am to live here! The summers up in Prescott are definitely something to write home about- usually in the 70s-80s, fresh clean mountain air, and sunny. Today I spent the afternoon outside with friends and it was great. I walked down and met Amber Joy and Lilly (her new rescue puppy!) on the square around noon. I decided to leave Maddie home because Lilly hasn't gotten her spay scars out yet and I didn't want Madeline to encourage her to jump at all. There was the typical huge art fair downtown and Lilly was not having it, so we took her back to Amber's and then walked down to the Brew Pub to meet Adie, Addison and Cathy while they finished their beers. The afternoon turned into just relaxing, walking around and enjoying each other's company. Once Addy went home to eat the girls and I just sat in the grass on the square and had some much needed girl talk. Perfect weather, beautiful day. After hangouts we all decided to go see The Hangover, so we walked back to my house to get Hank and headed to the theater. I thought the movie was definitely funny- I've seen funnier, but this was total laugh out loud material, and it put me in a really good mood! Besides this splitting headache that suddenly appeared, that good mood is still here, now that I'm home and relaxing. Hank and Lance are recording in the living room, and I am going to spend the evening baking some blueberry flax muffins and continuing to organize this mess we made last night.

I hope everyone had a lovely day! Here are some photos from this afternoon.

Beautiful Prescott sky


Amber Joy and me


Cactus necklace, so cool


Amber and Lilly


Addison and Adie :)