So many things have changed over the years since Blaine and I got married. New jobs, new cars, new houses...but the biggest change was becoming parents. This was the one thing we both wanted more than anything in the world.
We quickly learned that this was not something that was as easy to obtain as we thought. Without going in to detail, we had a very difficult and emotional year prior to getting pregnant with Presley. At the height of our sadness, we decided we had to get away and leave all the stress and disappointment behind for just a while. We decided to go to Napa to relax and indulge in one of our shared passions...wine. Because of that trip, wine will forever have a special place in our hearts. Not just because we love to drink it, but because it will forever remind us of a time filled with love and most importantly, hope.
Here we are in Napa in June of 2008.
It was an unbelievable trip and exactly what we needed. We learned so much about wine and probably bought way more that we should have. One of the bottles we bought was a Nickel and Nickel dessert wine called "Dolce". It was so pretty and would need to be used for such a special occasion that Blaine and I joked how we would probably never drink it. We decided at that moment that we would not open this bottle until we brought a baby home from the hospital. When we got home, we tucked it away in the back of our liquor cabinet. It was helpful to be optimistic, but that bottle would have been very difficult to look at everyday. The full bottle would be yet another reminder that we didn't have what we so desperately wanted.
6 months after buying that bottle, our prayers were answered and we found out we were expecting our sweet little Presley. We quickly reserved a good portion of our Napa bottles for special occasions: Presley's first steps, first words, first day of school, etc...
When we brought her home from the hospital, the last thing we wanted to do was drink a bottle of wine. When you know you will only get 3 hours of sleep at a time, it's really hard to want to celebrate with drinking. But, three months later while we were decorating our Christmas tree (the first as a family of three), Presley laughed for the very first time. It seemed like the perfect time to crack open that bottle and celebrate...and that's exactly what we did.
Here's a picture from that night in 2009.
Drinking this wine with my wonderful husband as our sweet little baby girl slept peacefully in her crib was one of the best moments of my life.
We decided to use the corks for these special occasion, much like a baby book...recording dates and why we drank them.
This past week we celebrated another big event...our sweet Beckett's first birthday. We started to run low on our Napa trip wine a while back. When I was 7 months pregnant with Beckett, Blaine brought home this bottle and said it was for our new baby's first birthday. We drank it last week and it was wonderful!
We are slowly adding to Beckett's cork collection one bottle at a time.
I love to go back and look at all the corks and remember how wonderful it was to share that bottle with Blaine, celebrating a special moment in our life.
This is where we keep all our corks from wines we drink to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, or milestones for our kids. I hope we have enough of all of those to fill up this jar 1000 times over.
