Hi, dear readers! I didn’t mean to disappear for a month, but life has been hectic. Between travel, work, toddler needs, and life, time just got away from me. Let’s catch up, shall we?

Travel

At the end of September, Nick and I traveled to California. It was a dual-purpose trip: My best friend was getting married in Carmel-by-the-Sea and asked me to be in the wedding on September 29th, to which I couldn’t say yes fast enough, and then, because her wedding was two days before our own wedding anniversary on October 1st, Nick and I decided to head up to San Francisco for a few days to celebrate our own wedded bliss.

The wedding was stunningly gorgeous. I’m so jealous of how beautiful everything was but I’m honestly not surprised because it simply matched the beauty that is my best friend, both inside and out. I was so busy helping with and prepping for the wedding that I didn’t get to take many photos, but I can’t wait to see the photos that the photographer took. I have a feeling they’re going to be top notch. In the meantime, here are a few that I managed to snap when in the little bit of downtown we had.

Big Sur, California. This was basically the background of my friend’s wedding!

Happy bridesmaid!

Obligatory Golden Gate Bridge picture

Fashion

In North Carolina, we had about a week of “false” fall in mid-September where the temperature cooled down to a beautiful 68-75 degrees, but then quickly heated up again. In California, it was “true” fall with temps in the 60s-70s every day. I think that was my favorite thing about California aside from the wedding. Anyway, NC’s false fall allowed me to wear a few fall-like outfits, which was exciting. You can find them on my Instagram and I shared them on Nikki by example’s Facebook page, but here’s a recap.

Fall outfits, finally!

Outfit 1: Blouse: Loft Outlet | Cardigan: via Stitch Fix | Jeans: LOFT | Shoes: H&M | Necklace: Old Navy 
Outfit 2: Sweater: ModCloth | Jeans: Wit & Wisdom via Stitch Fix | Shoes: Banana Republic (old) | Necklace: J. Crew Factory
Outfit 3: Sweater & Trousers: Banana Republic (old) | Shoes: H&M | Jewelry: Target | see outfit post here.
Outfit 4: Sweater: ModCloth | Jeans: LOFT | Shoes: Madden Girl | Necklace: J. Crew Factory | Belt: Target

Family

In mid-August, Sebastian started potty training and he’s really been rocking it! We’ve gotten super lucky in that many of his friends at preschool are also potty training so I think he picked up on it really quickly from seeing them go to the potty at school. He’s very good about peeing on the toilet on his own and is slowly overcoming his fear of pooping on the toilet. This is pretty common with kids from what I’ve read and heard. I feel like it has been incredibly easy learning/training process, and that for that I am eternally grateful! This kid is truly the best.

The “baby potty” as Sebastian calls it.

Work

I just accepted an offer to work as a research coordinator in the Department of Population Health at one of the large universities in the area and I start next month. It’s a welcomed change that will come with more responsibilities and more pay, so I’m really excited to start this new career journey. I will miss working in adolescent sexual health but the time has come for me to move on and move up in my career. And don’t worry – the building also has a big mirror in the restroom so you’ll still get regular outfit updates 😉

I will soon be a university employee

I think that’s it for now. Lots of stuff going on and many changes to work through, but overall, life is great! I hope all is going well for you, too.

Hi, friends. I didn’t mean to disappear for a few weeks, but life got a little crazy. Nick’s grandfather passed away toward the end of June so we headed down to Georgia for the memorial service, to spend time with family, and to have our own little family vacation. We were gone for about five days, and the first few were spent with family and attending the memorial service. The service was a celebration of Nick’s grandfather’s life so we tried to keep it joyous instead of sad. Here are my guys in their matching outfits. Aren’t they adorable?!

Hi readers!

This is my first post in about six months. My previous posts became sporadic and were unreliable so I decided to take a break to figure out what blogging meant for me while I balanced everything else in my life. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately, which prompted me to write this post. I have a lot of ideas (and outfits) for this space, so I think I’m ready to come back. In the meantime, let’s play catch up. I might create fuller, more detailed posts on each event at a later time, but here’s what life has been like in a nutshell for NCsquared.

Travel
-In May, Nick and I attended my friend’s wedding over Memorial Day weekend in Charleston, SC. It was held at the aquarium and was the first time I’d ever been to a wedding in an aquarium, and it was absolutely beautiful.

Hominy Grill in Charleston, SC. Delicious food! I would highly recommend you check it out if you’re ever there.

-In July, we visited my best friend, Karissa, in Los Angeles. I’ve been to see her there once before, but this was the first time Nick and I went together and we had a blast. I met Karissa when I first moved to Durham and she moved to LA about five years ago to pursue her PhD at USC. I miss her like crazy so getting to spend almost a week with her was the best.

NCsquared in Santa Monica. You can see the Santa Monica pier behind us!

The bad news
At the end of August, our beautiful dog and light of our lives, Chico, suddenly passed away from cancer after 10 years of providing us with so much love and happiness. We’re still so heartbroken. I would like to do a memorial post in the future when it gets a little easier to write about him.

Chico Antonio, 2006-2016. RIP little man

The good news
NCsquared is becoming NCcubed (NC3) as I’m currently 18 weeks pregnant! Everyone who has known me for a long time (in real life) was super shocked to find out we’re having a baby… on purpose… because all through our 20s, we had no desire to have children. Things change, though, and life plans get re-evaluated, and one day you may realize that, actually, you do want a little mini-me (or mini-him) running around in your life. And that’s okay. I’m due in March and we are thrilled.

NCsquared is having a baby!

As you can imagine, the last few months have been an emotional rollercoaster for me, but I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of writing about my life. I hope you find it entertaining, educational, and informational! It feels good to be back.

Nikki of NCsquared Life

 Let it Shine Linkup | Hello Monday Linkup

It’s time for this week’s Friday Four, a fun survey I’m doing so that my readers can get to know me a little better. This week I’m talking about four places I have been.  Nick and I love traveling and seeing new places, and I try to write about it as often as I can. Two of our favorite traditions are 1) to take daycations, or small vacations that we can do in one day and 2) when we take long road trips, we research restaurants en route that have been featured on Food Network, Travel Channel, Cooking Channel, etc. and make sure to stop at them on our way. If you’re a new reader (or a regular that missed some of these earlier posts) please check out the following pages on my blog!

I just wrote about our Mini Vacation to Savannah, GA so I won’t include that one here, but be sure to read about it if you haven’t already.

1. Middletown, RI.

My first flight ever was for a daycation to Rhode Island to eat at Flo’s Clam Shack. This is the trip that started it all and you should read all about it and even watch my videos here. It all began because my job was sending me to a conference in Denver, CO, and I had never flown before; I’d never even set foot in an airport – hard to believe, I know! I was so scared about taking a 3-hour flight for the first time all by myself, and Nick suggested we take a short flight together before the conference so I would have some experience. He found some really cheap tickets to Rhode Island and off we went. It was a fun and exhausting experience but one I’ll never forget.

This blog post was when I first started blogging so please excuse the different sized photos and weird pull quotes; I was still trying to figure it all out.

2. Atlanta, GA.

I’ve actually been to Atlanta several times but most recently was almost two years in August 2013, right after I started graduate school. We wanted to take a daycation before I got so busy with school and we couldn’t do anything for a while. We went to The Little Tart Bakeshop for breakfast, then explored the Historic Oakland Cemetery, followed by chocolate at Cocoa Atlanta Chocolate Shop, and finally lunch at Bone Garden Cantina. Read all about it here.

3. Illinois.

Nick is originally from Illinois and still has a lot of family that lives there. We’ve taken several road trips to visit for various birthday celebrations, weddings, etc. I documented most of the last trip we took to Illinois and the different places we stopped along the way. The first was the Parkette Drive In restaurant in Lexington, KY, and then we stopped again in Champaign, IL to eat at Fat Sandwich Company, where they put everything but the kitchen sink in their sandwiches and they’re so good! Read all about it here.

4. Puerto Rico.

Nick and I went to Puerto Rico for our honeymoon in May of 2012 and I fell in love with the ‘isla de encanto’ or island of enchantment. For the past three years, I’ve been working on a page about it but I barely have enough time to get outfit photos up so it’s been really difficult to finish that post. I’ll make that my goal for this summer! Anyway, we did so many fun and amazing things like take a walking food tour, swam in the ocean in a spot that only locals knew about and then ate at a delicious road side food stand, we explored a beautiful cave, climbed a waterfall and zip-lined back down, played in the bioluminescent bay, and explored the city. I loved every single thing about Puerto Rico and I cannot wait to go back.

*All photos by me.

Where all have you been? What is/was your favorite place to visit?

Warning: there’s lots of text in this post because we had a fantastic time!

We’re back from our mini Savannah vacation! We had a great time and I can’t wait to go back; there were so many things to do that we didn’t get to fit it all in to our few days there. So, this post has made me realize that I’m not the best blogger because I get so caught up in the moment that I’m not able to multitask by taking photos and being present at the same time. In fact, I lugged my nice camera with me but didn’t take a single photo with it and all I have is a few of the best phone photos to share with you. But the important thing is that Nick and I had a good time and got to spend some quality time together 🙂

I snapped a few pics during our travel. I tried to convince Nick to stop at South of the Border in South Carolina but he didn’t think it would be very fun. Maybe next time.

Historic Savannah is beautiful. I love all of the architecture and plant life; the Spanish moss-filled trees are magical! One reason we chose Savannah for our trip is because I visited over the summer for my best friend’s bachelorette weekend (because she used to live there) and I thought it was so pretty and romantic and I couldn’t wait to come back with Nick. Another reason is because I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and was very intrigued. I also made Nick watch the movie so that he would be “in the know” with some of the things I wanted to do and see.

One of our first stops was breakfast at Clary’s café. They have THE. BEST. chicken fried steak I’ve ever eaten. We ended up going to Clary’s two out of the three mornings we were there. When we find something we like, we tend to stick to it. And did you know that they filmed some of the movie in the café?

After breakfast, we did a lot of walking around the area. I think the squares in Savannah are amazing. They’re so pretty, like little mini parks in the middle of the street. I wish we had them here in Durham.

This is the only photo I got of my outfits and everything but the pants was in my packing post. I ended up switching out the pink sweater for this pink tee (because it was supposed to be really warm) and I added an extra pair of jeans because a friend of mine made a good point that I might spill something green on my white pants so I should take a backup pair. Apparently, St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal in Savannah, but we left before most of the activities began. 

This is Nick in Franklin Square. He wanted his photo with this particular statue because he is proud of his Haitian heritage.

This is us doing some shopping. #truelove

We were at the Paris Market and I made Nick try a Rose Granita, which is  semi-frozen dessert made from sugar, water and, in this case, rose flavoring. He did not like it. He said he felt like he just chewed on a rose petal. I said that’s exactly why I liked it! We got him an Elderflower granita, and he liked it much better.

Afterward, we took a stroll down Riverfront Plaza. I loved the worn look of the buildings. I kept imagining what life was like back when shipping and boats were the main form of travel. That kind of thing really interests me.

I love walking through beautiful cemeteries and all of those in Georgia are absolutely beautiful. For reference, see our last Daycation to Atlanta where we ventured through the Historic Oakland Cemetery. We were very close to the Colonial Park Cemetery so we took a quick stroll through it.

I feel like I wouldn’t be a good public health student/professional if I didn’t acknowledge the Yellow Fever Epidemic!

Normally when we travel, we try to find restaurants that have been featured on Food Network or the Travel Channel or one of those other foodie TV shows. This time, however, we kind of stayed off the beaten path and it was great. We had dinner at Wall’s BBQ, which was literally in an alley/lane and we would have walked right past it if we hadn’t been using our GPS. The food was great, probably because it felt like we were in grandma’s kitchen.

photo source

If you should know anything about me, it’s that I LOVE ghost stories so I also look for ghost walks and tours when I travel. This trip was no different, except I was able to find an awesome tour that not only incorporated the haunted history of Savannah, but also took us by the Mercer Williams House and Museum, from the book (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). This is a photo of Mercer House where the infamous murder took place. I wanted to go to the museum, BUT I found out that only a few rooms on the first floor were open for visitors and they wouldn’t answer any questions about the murder/book/movie, so I didn’t think it would be very fun. They also filmed the movie here. There were a lot of other spooky stops on our tour, but this was the best photo I got from it all. I really enjoyed hearing the history of all these places as much as hearing about the ghosts. I also didn’t realize how big voodoo was in this area back in the day. Fascinating!

I mentioned that we missed most of the St. Patrick’s Day activities but we did get to see them turn the fountain green in Forsyth Park. It was drizzling and we got there a little late so we didn’t get a very good spot but it was a nice experience nonetheless.

We stayed inside most of our last day there because of all the rain and we got up early the next day to head back but we still managed to make the most of it.

I can’t wait to take another trip!

If you’re interested in any of the things I’ve mentioned, here are some links:

Clary’s Cafe
Paris Market
Riverfront Plaza
Colonial Park Cemetery
Wall’s BBQ
Ghost City Tours Savannah
Mercer Williams House Museum
Forsyth Park

*All photos by me except for the one of Wall’s BBQ storefront, which has a link to the original photo source.