Oregon To Olé With The Kays

01/09/2026

First day of school! 📚✏️❤️
Somehow we officially have a 2nd grader!! 😭 Teagan headed off this morning completely decked out in KPop Demon Hunters — backpack, school supplies, water bottle, shirt… apparently we have a theme this year. 😂 She was excited and ready to go, rolling her backpack out the door like she owned the place.
Dom’s school runs year-round, so technically he didn’t get a summer break, but today was his transition from the summer program into the regular school year — so we’re counting it as his first day too! And judging by that giant smile and the backpack straps firmly in hand, he was pretty pleased to be included. 🥰
I swear these two just keep getting bigger when we aren’t looking.
Here’s to 2nd grade for Teagan and a brand-new school year for Dom! ❤️📚
(And yes, Teagan’s commitment to KPop Demon Hunters is apparently absolute. 😂)

30/08/2026

Today we celebrated our baby boy's second birthday!! It is crazy how fast the year has flown by, it still feels like we were just in that first apartment watching him demolish his first ever piece of chocolate cake. He has grown so much and it has been a joy to watch. He is just starting to really talk, and its so much fun to hear which words he has picked up in Spanish and which in English. For example, he says "Hola" instead of hi or hello, and asks for "agua". We are so proud of him ❤️. We spent the day relaxing at home and Dom got to open his presents early so he could spend the afternoon playing with them. Little man is a big fan of cars, just like his cousin Masyn, and was happily content to play with his new racetracks for a couple hours. After dinner, he once again demolished his piece of chocolate cake and once again, we headed straight to the bath tub 😁 Happy birthday Dominik! We love you so much!

28/08/2026

What a crazy whirlwind these last two weeks have been! ❤️

Knowing that one of my best friends would be welcoming twins at the end of the summer, I planned months ago to fly out to Dublin to spend some time with them and help however I could. Bringing home one new baby is overwhelming enough — and they were about to have three under three! 😂

I arrived the evening of the 17th, and the timing turned out to be incredibly fortunate. The very next evening, we ended up taking one of the girls to the ER because she wasn’t eating well, and it had gotten to the point where it was genuinely scary. She was admitted to the hospital, which suddenly meant one parent was there with her while the other was home trying to manage an infant and a toddler.

Thankfully, I was already there and able to jump in wherever I was needed — helping with the baby, keeping the toddler entertained, and basically turning their kitchen into my own personal meal-prep operation. 😂 I filled their fridge and freezer with enough easy meals that hopefully cooking can be one less thing they have to think about for the next couple of weeks.

What was originally supposed to be a shorter visit ended up getting extended because baby girl remained in the hospital for a week and a half. She finally got to come home yesterday, just in time for me to head home today. ❤️

It certainly wasn’t the visit any of us expected, but I’m so grateful I happened to be there when they needed an extra set of hands. I got to spend so much time with one of my favorite people and his beautiful family, love on those sweet babies, and hopefully make an incredibly stressful couple of weeks just a little bit easier.

Now everyone is finally home together where they belong, their freezer is packed, and I am officially hanging up my apron for a while because I don’t think I have done that much cooking in YEARS. 😂❤️

Dublin, it’s been quite the two weeks. 🇮🇪

23/08/2026

Im currently in Dun Laoghaired, Ireland, just outside of Dublin, visiting one of my long time best friends and his family. They just welcomed 2 new beautiful baby girls 🥰 I came out to help out since having a toddler and 2 newborns is a LOT. I made the girls blankets a couple months ago but accidentally ordered more yarn than I meant to and since my summer class ended mid July, Ive had some time to make some additional gifts. I may have gone a bit overboard...😂 But they were very well received 😁 Im excited to see photos of the girls in all their clothes. They are already getting good use out of the blankets and lovies.

As a side note, I used AI to help me edit the photos of my work because the only place I had to take the photos was on a kinda dirty mattress in a shadowy room. I used Chat GPT to edit the background and lighting/shadows in my photos, but the crochet peices are all mine. FB slapped an AI content label on the post

14/08/2026

Nik and I celebrated our anniversary by trying the Spanish version of a Brazilian steakhouse and it did NOT disappoint! And to our absolute delight, they had the cinnamon crusted rotisserie pineapple that we used to get at Brazil Grill in Portland before they closed down. The meat is great, but the pineapple 🤤 They came back with it 3 times! And to top it off, we shared the passion fruit mousse which was absolutely to die for!! It was a wonderful evening 🥰

13/08/2026

13/08/2026

Photo of our view of the eclipse last night. We were about a 1.5 hour drive away from totality but since we dont have our car quite yet, we stayed home and viewed it from here

13/08/2026

15 years. ❤️

Fifteen years ago today, I married Nik.

And I can confidently say that neither one of us had any fu***ng idea what we were signing up for. 😂

We had plans, of course. We thought we knew what our life would look like. And then we actually went and lived it.

And somehow, the life we built turned out bigger, messier, harder, funnier, and so much more incredible than anything I could have imagined back then.

In 15 years, we've built careers and changed careers. We've made huge decisions and spectacularly questionable ones. We've struggled. We've succeeded. We've lost people we loved. We've laughed until we couldn't breathe. We've become parents to two incredible kids. We've packed up our entire lives and moved across the world. We've traveled, explored, gotten lost, figured s**t out, changed plans approximately 900 times, and collected enough ridiculous stories to last us the rest of our lives.

We've basically grown up together.

And through every version of our life, there has been one constant:

Us.

Not some perfect, polished version of us.

The real us.

The exhausted us. The laughing-so-hard-we're-crying us. The stressed-out us. The "what the hell are we doing?" us. The sitting together dreaming up our next completely unreasonable idea us.

We've seen each other at our absolute best and our absolute worst, and somehow, 15 years later, you're still the person I want beside me for all of it.

You're my husband, my partner, my favorite pain in the ass, the father of our two amazing kids, and the person who can still make me laugh harder than anyone else on earth.

The two people who got married 15 years ago would never believe me if I showed them our life today.

Two kids.

A home on the other side of the world.

More adventures than I can count.

And somehow, we're still just getting started.

Happy 15th anniversary, Nik. ❤️

I love the life we've built.

I love the family we've created.

I love who we've become.

And most of all, I still love you.

Here's to the first 15 years — and to whatever crazy s**t we decide to do with the next 15. 😂❤️

04/08/2026

We took the kids to the park the other day. Little man had gotten so used to riding the buses on our trip that he walked himself over to the bus stop and climbed up on the bench 😂