Boston!

Heading to Boston after work today! Have plans with my college roomate and her boyfriend, and our other friend and her boyfriend, and the other captain of my tennis team, my cousin and her boyfriend and our family friend! It's going to be a crazy/busy weekend but I am SO excited I can't even contain myself! I'm not sure what all of you Boston bloggers are up to this weekend and the chances of us running into each other are *so* slim, but I'll be on the lookout for you! :)

My cousin arrives today from MI with my sister (who flew out to help her drive) and her three kids, twins (4 years old) and my god-daughter (1) they'll be here for the week too! Wahoo! :)

Have a great weekend!

Run, Run, Run

This morning I wasn't teaching my 6am jazzercise class so I thought I would take advantage of waking up early and head out for a run. It was a "personal best" timewise (for all of you nike+ people) and I feel really great about it! However... a group (are they groups?) of flies found me one mile into my run and would NOT leave me alone! I tried to outrun them, I tried to swat them, I tried to swish them with my ponytail- - NOTHING WORKED. They were dive-bombing my head, landing on my ears and driving me crazy! Those damn flies have got to be the fittest flies around, keeping up with me for 5 miles. How do you get flies to leave you alone? I would have thought because I was moving they wouldn't have stuck around for so long, at the rate they were circling my head, you would have thought I was road kill.

The Shuttle

The road that I take into work everyday is one of those roads, every city has at least one, that is replete with car dealerships. You know, one dealership on top of another, with neon signs waving crazily, "lowest prices of '07" and "manufacturer's price!" or "all 2006 have GOT TO GO!" It's five miles of toyotas, fords, hondas, range rovers, chevys, hummers, mercedes, volvos, and volkswagons. Because I work on the other side of this road I have invariably become The Car Lady. If something is wrong with someone's car and they need to have it checked out, or it needs an oil change, or something needs updating, I get THE CALL. The call where I am asked to switch cars with this person for the day, drive their car to the dealership (whichever one it may be, I go by them all) then pick their car up at the end of the day and switch back. I don't really mind doing this as it isn't completely inconvenient for me to do but through all of this dropping off and picking up I have become the SHUTTLE GIRL. That's right. I have to take the shuttle (usually a van or station wagon) to work with about 5 other people at least once a week. Taking the shuttle doesn't even really bother me, in fact, one dealership has the best shuttle around- - they actually have more than one vehicle and they call it the calvary- - it's awesome and that day I got driven to work BY MYSELF (praise the lord) in a beautiful mercedes crossover that will be the car I buy when I buy my next new car (which won't be for a very, very, very, very, VERY long time).

However, this morning I had to drop MY OWN car off and was brought to work with four other people in a volvo station wagon. Now, I'm all about volvo's and certainly all about the station wagon (this is my dream car that [finally] I acquired when I graduated from college) but their shuttle wagon is a V50 and probably the smallest station wagon volvo makes. Come on. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. They could at least bring us in the XC70 or XC90 so we're not squished in the back next to a CHAIN SMOKER because you know as soon as you're squished in the back of a car with a complete stranger they're either going to have halitosis or be a CHAIN SMOKER. I had to hold my breath all the way to work and now I have a smell-of-smoke inducded headache.

What a Weekend

The party was a *huge* success! I still cannot get over how seamlessly everything came together. My parents were completely surprised and touched by the whole thing and everyone had a really great time! (I may have had too good of a time... I passed out Saturday night in my party dress and woke up Sunday morning with a HUGE hangover-- not pretty).

We spent the entire day yesterday out by the pool and grilled out for dinner. It was the perfect way to end the weekend and gave my parents plenty of opportunities to try out their new camera (which they LOVE).

My sisters and I, at the party toasting our parents

Here Comes the Weekend!

Well, that g&t last night was perfect. :) I hope, those of you who particpated, enjoyed yours as well. I went for a nice long run this morning which felt wonderful, but when I came back I was COVERED in mosquito bites- - covered! I guess I'll have to remember to lather up in bug spray before I hit the road. It probably doesn't help that where I like to run is a 10 mile (no I don't run the whole length) long dirt road replete with farms, rabbits, horses, creeks and trees- - it's always damp and dewey.

Not too much going on this weekend, just the big surprise party tomorrow night! We went shopping last night for all of the food/decorations we just need to now finish the playlist and getting pictures to put around. I hope everything comes together seamlessly.

It looks like its going to rain all day today, but thats okay with me. If I'm going to be in my office all day, I'd rather the weather was TERRIBLE!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Hopefully I'll have some great stories about the party on Monday!

Just Floating By

Happy first official day of summer everyone! I haven't been a very exciting blogger lately! (Ha, am I ever?!?!) I went to my boyfriend's Tuesday night which was nice, it's good to hang out just the two of us sometimes and he came back here last night to come to my jazzercise class because I was getting monitored (totally stressful, but I think I did okay... I'll let you know when I get my "score".) It was nice, he came and my other good friend came. It was a larger class than usual which kept my adrenaline going. We've talked about everything and I think we're working towards a better place, we'll see. :)

I finally have time now tonight/tomorrow night to finalize everything for my parents 25th Anniversary party. I'm getting really excited for it and excited for the day just to be HERE so I can stop stressing about it!

Very much looking forward to Friday at 5... I'm so ready for the weekend!

In honor of the first day of summer, I say this evening at 7pm we all have a nice (HUGE) gin and tonic and toast our blogging friends. :)

A little better

So, I won't bore you every detail of the bad weekend but the climactic event was when, at 1am on Church Street in downtown Burlington, my boyfriend decides he has had enough of my craziness (I admit, I am slightly crazy, but not in a bad way...) and walks away from me saying, "I'm so done. I'm done. I'm not coming home tonight." And then he walked away. And left me there. Alone. At 1am. In Burlington.

I am by no means incapable of independance or finding my own way home ( I did, just fine) and I can't walk anywhere downtown without running into someone I know, but it *really* irritates me that after more than two years of dating he can get so angry that he doesn't think we should be ending the night together and left me to take a cab by myself, to my car parked on a dark street, then home. And it's embarrassing when my family and friends are like... "Ummm... what happened?" Then he didn't answer any of my calls or texts and didn't come home until 4 am. I was more than annoyed, obviously. And I can't help that feel regardless of how mad he is, his first concern should be ME, right? I mean, I was pretty mad too, but I called and texted him to make sure that he had a ride home and money for a cab, etc. He didn't even WONDER where I went or what I did.

It was just one of those weekends where I found myself wondering..."what the hell am I doing with all of this?" and it really doesn't feel good to be questioning that.

We are still sorting everything out but he started his job officially this week so he's moved to his house close to his work which will be good to give us some perspective. I haven't seen the house yet so I'm heading up there after work today to make dinner and so we can try to work everything out. We'll see how it goes...

I'm heading to Boston next weekend for a Red Sox game... can't wait! :)

Weekend

Ugh, rough weekend. I'm thinking about doing a longer post about everything that happened but I'd be sharing *much* more than I usually do and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that...

Ice Wine

On a hot summer evening, why not cool down with some ice wine? Ice wine is a (delicious) dessert wine that is produced from grapes that have frozen on the vine. The water in the grape freezes but the sugars and other dissolved solids do not which results a very concentrated, and sweet, liquid. Only healthy grapes are able to stay on the vine when temperatures reach freezing so be assured that all grapes used to make ice wine are full-bodied and healthy! Because of the difficulty of processing frozen grapes and the low amount of of liquid yielded from them ice wine is significantly more expensive than table wine and often comes in much smaller bottles, but, I assure you- - it's worth every penny. The next time you're looking for a celebratory treat, try some ice wine. You won't be disapointed.

The Anniversary

I like to write poems for invitations, it seems more fun and gets everyone excited about the event coming up. I always write one for our Maine Reunion Party (when we get together with the families we vacation with in the summer at Christmas time), for our 4th of July party, and for our Christmas party. They're never very fancy and are pretty simple rhymes but sometimes I put them to a "tune". You know, like, sing this poem to the tune of Deck the Halls?
"Deck the house with wine and beer,
Falalalala, lalalala
Maine Reunion time is here,
Falalalala, lalalala..."
I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to come up with anything quickley for my parent's anniversary but I worked on it yesterday morning and it turned out okay... I thought I would share it with all of you- - call me crazy. :)

Their wedding song was Could I Have This Dance by Anne Murray so I tried to incorporate it into the poem.

A 25th Anniversary


On this day in ‘82
M_____ and A_____ said “I do”
And asked each other, as husband and wife
“Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?”

Hand in hand they solemnly swore
To stand by each other richer or poorer
For standing alone they would progress
But together they knew they would find success

They set out that day for their life together
To achieve their dreams for worse or better
But their youthful optimism could never foresee
How they’d branch the family tree

It was not always easy, four girls in seven years,
And at times surely brought them to tears,
Tears of triumph and tears of defeat,
But with the family they’ve created their life is complete

But what would life be without family and friends
Who have seen them together beginning to end
In 25 years their accomplishments aren’t small
And we’d love for you to come celebrate them all

On June 23rd at ?:00pm we will be
At _____Main Street in _________
Your friendship and support is enough to get them through
The next twenty-five years, so no gifts please, just YOU

Please keep this quiet as it’s a surprise
And we’d hate to our parents to have to lie (:))
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to call
M____ at 555.555.5555 any time at all

When they’re together, it feels so right
They’ll be dancing this dance for the rest of their lives

Switchflops

Check them out: Switchflops

25 Years

So, we finally decided what to do for my parent's 25th anniversary. We're still working on a gift idea, but settled on the get-together! There is a bar near our house that my parents like to go to and have become friendly with the owners. There is no charge to have a private party there and since it's a central location to all of those people we'll be inviting, it seems perfect! This particular bar doesn't serve food, but that is just as well because I like to bring my own anyway. The owners are being really easy-going about the entire thing and said they would help us decorate the day-of and would run any type of drink special that I wanted. Of course, this got me thinking... should I ask them to have one type of fun, summery drink "on-the-house" like pitchers of margaritas, or sangria around, or should I ask for a special price on my parent's drink of choice- - Mich Ultra? (Ha, don't laugh... :)).

Then of course, I'm trying to decide what to do for the bar. I definitely cannot afford to have an open bar the entire time but I'm wondering if I should have one type of drink that is free all night, if I should get a couple of kegs (when they're gone, they're gone), or if I should give a set amount up front and all drinks are on that tab until it's gone. I don't know, I want it to be fun and stress-free, and not TACKY. Any suggestions?

Decorating... I think we'll have a few pictures of them together, over the years, around but other than that, I'm not sure what to do. Does anyone have any ideas?!?

This is a week from Saturday and since we just decided last night what our plan was going to be... it's going to be a little late of notice, ugh. I hate that. :)

Goodbye, Goodbye Now

I met my boyfriend's parents at their campground at 6:30 this morning to give them a lunch I had packed and to say goodbye. They were hoping to leave early but something tells me that it may take them a while to motivate. (On their way here they left Bethlehem, PA at 11am on a Friday and didn't arrive at my house, 364miles away, until Saturday afternoon.) It was a crazy weekend but his parents finally met my sisters and saw VT for the first time.

I think it was fairly overwhelming for them, my boyfriend is an only child and his parents are both 65+. Their house is quiet, everyone is extremely stubborn, I mean, INDEPENDANT, soft spoken and takes a long time to motivate. My house is, pretty much, the complete opposite. We're loud (from years of trying to be heard over 5 other loud people at the dinner table), flexible, and cooperative- - you have to be when you all shared bedrooms and one bathroom growing up. If nothing else, I think his parents have a better understanding of where I'm coming from and why I act the way I do (I swear, they think I'm crazy sometimes). :)

I'm hoping for a quiet rest of the week.

Shop- Lolly Lu

"It's better to have lost and love than to live with that psycho for the rest of your life"
"She knew she had a big fat ass and her attiditude was to kiss it"

Lolly Lu

Friday Free Write

Ahhhhh, the sweet sounds of Friday. It's easier to get out of bed knowing that I have the weekend in front of me! The past week has been really busy with end of the year school activities (being a coach, you're expected to attend many functions). We had our tennis banquet last night, it was dessert only since we couldn't start until 7:15, but the girls enjoyed it. My assistant coach and I picked out the highlight of each girl's season (their best match) and talked about each of them individually. We also presented them with their "match ball" (a tennis ball with their name, opponent and score of their best match of the season), their certificates, letters, and Paper Plate Award. Have you heard of those? Paper plate awards? They are informal awards written on the backs of paper plates, it keeps things light and fun and the girls love seeing what theirs will be. For example, we had the Discovery Award, for always finding a way to win, the 11th Hour Award, for taking the match to it's last possible point the most times, the Third Set Specialist Award, for always winning third set matches... you get the idea. It was over by 8:30pm, short and sweet, just how I like it. The girls also got us coaches gifts, my assistant got an embroidered hat with our team info, and the girls got me a gift certificate to Monelle's in Burlington- - my favorite store EVER. (Those of you who've been to it, you know what I mean.) They carry Jen's belts too... who knows what I'll pick out for myself!

We went out to dinner after the banquet last night, of course, dinner wasn't enough for the boys so I brought them downtown on our way home. They wanted to go "out, out." I went to bed but, they woke me up when they got home... at 3:30am talking a whole bunch of ridiculousness. I don't think I've mentioned... summers are crazy at my house between my parents, my three sisters, myself, our boyfriends/friends there are at least 10 people in my house at all times. This makes for extremely creative driveway parking. :)

I had my exit meeting with the Athletic Director this morning because the season is over. I can handle criticism, critiques, suggestions very well but do you ever get the feeling that someone TRIES to find bad things to say about you? It's been a challenge this year with the AD and it's a bit of a touchy situation because he is my best friend's father and I've known him my entire life. He didn't say anything REALLY bad, but just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Oh well... I have 9months before I need to deal with him again. :) While I was walking out of school I ran into my youngest sister talking with the principal, they stopped to say hi and tell me that she had just been approved to graduate a year early! She is *so* excited and had been working towards this goal since middle school. She can always change her mind, but she wants this so badly. If she does go through with it, it means that she and my second-to-youngest sister will graduate and go to college together. They both want to go where my other sister and I did so now they're focusing on getting in. :) I hope this ends well. My youngest sister just called me too, she passed her driving test today. What a day for her, I feel as though the day will end with some celebratory drinks... bring 'em on!

My boyfriend's parents are coming to VT for the first time today for the weekend... I could predict exactly how the weekend will go for all of you, but I'll wait until I have the "real" stories. I promise, there will be some. Please think of me this weekend. ;)

I usually don't share people pictures, but two of my guy friends came to my Jazzercise class this week, and well... I couldn't resist!

For those of you in the Northeast, you might recognize these guys... former UVM basketball stars Taylor Coppenrath and TJ Sorrentine, yea, they caused quite a scene.

Got a Teething Ring?

I was blessed to be born with bone (pun intended)-straight teeth. I'm lucky, I know. No retainers, no braces, no rubberbands, no headgear. I know, I don't have anything to complain about so I should just keep my straight-toothed mouth shut. HOWEVER, (come on, you knew this was coming) my wisdom teeth happen to be STRAIGHT too which means that my dentist has opted to let them come in normally. This has been okay so far, over the past 12 years all four have popped up (sloooooowwwwwwlyyyy), are fitting in quite nicely, and due to my somewhat neurotic oral-hygeine are cavity-free. Well, my lower-left wisdom tooth has decided that it would like to come it a faster rate lately and it is beyond painful. I've chewed on ice, I've got baby orajel and anbesol in EVERY bag I own and in my desk drawer, I've tried ingoring it, but it HURTS DAMN IT and I can't take it anymore!

Lake Champlain Islands and Farms

I took a tour of Vermont's Islands and Farms yesterday, for work, but what an experience. I know the importance of "being a tourist in your own backyard" and being familiar with what your local area has to offer, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job of that... until yesterday. I went to 6 places that I have never been before and I cannot wait to go back.

First we stopped at Carman Brook Farm, a small working farm in Highgate Springs and were able to see a calf just born hours before after her first bath, three new kittens, twin baby goats (kids...:)) and all of their cows. This particular barn is a tie-stall which means that their milking cows are tied all of the time in their stalls. At first I was a little put-off by this approach, but after learning more about it, it's pretty good for the cows. They all actually have their own waterbeds to stand/sleep in. (I know, that's crazy, right?) You should see this place.

We stopped at the Mississquoi Natural Wildlife Preserve and walked out through the bogs and lake on a 1.2 mile trail then headed to Saint Anne's Shrine in Isle La Motte.The lakeshore in front of the chapel is marked as the location of a landing by Samuel de Champlain in 1609. He was the first European to visit the lake and islands that bear his name. A seventeen-ton statue of the explorer identifies the spot. It was sculpted by F. L. Weber in the Vermont pavilion at Montreal's Expo '67.

The property also encompasses the location of Fort Saint Anne, Vermont's oldest settlement. It was the fourth in a series of forts built by the French as they moved south from their base in Montreal. Soldiers under the command of Captain Pierre de St. Paul, Sieur de La Motte, built the fort in 1666. That same year a chapel was built within the fort. It was the first chapel in Vermont, one of the first chapels in New England, and the first Church of St. Anne in the United States.

We stopped at Knight State Park for lunch, then headed to Snowfarm Vineyard in South Hero for a wine tasting. Taste we did. :) I went home with three bottles of wine, two very special ones. The first was an apple dessert wine made with apples from an orchard in South Hero and the second was Ice Wine. For those of you unfamiliar with Ice Wine, I'll post about it later, it's deserving of it's own post!

Our last stop of the day was Allenholm Farm where we visited their petting zoo and had the best apple pie I've ever had- - warm, out of the oven with a swirl of maple creemee on top. Mmmmm.

Farm owner Ray Allen gives their donkey a kiss.