The Warm Up

I typically call the week before school starts "warm up week." You get back into a schedule, but you have a little more freedom with your lunch time, social schedule, etc. This week was one for the books. I'm not going to elaborate. All I can say is this was the most unpredictable, ridiculous week in the history of my professional back to school career. I will leave it at that. Here's to hoping things don't continue during the actual school year, and that the current state of education gets it's act together pronto.

In more positive news this is also the warm up weekend for college football. It's the one redeeming quality of back to school season. Matt and I are in Pittsburgh this weekend to spend some time with my family. I'm excited to watch Penn State in Pennsylvania with my other PSU faithful, even if they are that playing in New Jersey this weekend. I just love Penn State so much! And I love watching College Gameday on Saturday mornings in the fall! WE ARE!!!!!

So Long Sweet Summer.

I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays. I really did. I hit peak tan about July 26th. I love sunbathing. So long sweet slumber. While I did wake up bright and early most of the summer, I did have more restful sleep. And the past two weeks that I've had off I have been taking advantage of extra sleep. I fell into you, now you're gracefully falling away. Work week is happening and it's almost September.

Hey thanks, thanks for that summer. Thanks to everyone who made my summer great. My babysitting friends, my game night friendsies, and our road trips to Pittsburgh and New England and celebrating our first anniversary. It's cold where you're going. It will be cold, but first it will be fall which means football and college gameday. And if it's cold maybe that will be a 2 week blizzard. I hope that your hearts always warm.

I gave you the best, I gave you the best that I had. I really did. Even if it meant 3 hour and 45 minute battles over cup of noodles, burned arms, cooking a lobster, driving countless hours in traffic, and visiting 12 states. Passed down the letters and passed down the best that I had.

So long sweet summer. I will miss you and all my free time and anxiety free mornings, noons, and nights. I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays. I will miss my tan. So long sweet slumber. I fell into you, now you're gracefully falling away. I hate the winter in Lexington. I hate the winter in Lexington. Lexington, Lexington, Lexington. Virginia, Virginia, Virginia.

So this might have been one of the weirder posts I have ever composed, and Age Six Racer probably has some way deeper, darker meaning, but I'm taking it at face value and saying So Long Sweet Summer. (I may or may not sing this at the top of my lungs multiple times between 10 minutes ago and tomorrow morning at 8:45). I know I am lucky and get more of a summer break than most, but it's always really hard to go back to work after such a nice long break. Here's to a fabulous summer in the suburbs with a new home and continuing to make good memories at game nights and on vacations to see our families. And here is to the 2013-2014 school year. It already promises to be no less than interesting. 

Recipe of the Week!

Lobster

I know I said that my last post was the last one, but I guess this could be counted as a vacation post. Especially since the only place I would really eat a lobster is on vacation in Maine. I think thats the first time I ever really had lobster 2 years ago. Growing up my dad was allergic to shellfish, and my sister developed the allergy as well, so we never really ate any of it. When we went to Maine I wanted to learn how to make lobster. Matt's mom came up one night to teach us how. 

Before.

This picture was taken right before the lobster snapped his tail
and Matt threw it behind him across the kitchen. I wish I would have caught that.

There really isn't a recipe, recipe. I think the highlights of the process are boiling a large, salted pot of water. After the water boils, drop in the lobsters and cover the pot. Note the time that the water starts to boil again and let them boil for another 16ish minutes (that was for 1-1.5 pound lobsters)...more or less depending on the size. Serve with butter and lemon (because I LOVE lemon). We also had some salad and roasted garlic and rosemary potatoes.

Boston

Sam Adams Brewery Tour in Jamaica Plain

During our week in New England Matt turned the big 3-0. Typically we don't go all out for birthdays, or even really get each other anything, but I thought 30 at least warranted something. I couldn't really think of anything to get Matt, so I was thinking that maybe a gift of doing something would be better. I researched buying Red Sox tickets and decided to go with those. I managed to not tell Matt for an entire month either.

I really wanted to somehow get Matt to the game without ever telling him about it, but that proved to be difficult because, A. Matt was being somewhat difficult, and B. We were staying most the time in Maine and I couldn't really think of a great reason that would make someone want to drive an hour and a half to Boston after having driven 10.5 hours the weekend before and having to drive 10.5 hours back to Virginia that coming weekend. I ended up giving him the tickets the morning of his birthday. He was still surprised. We decided to make a day of it and went to Boston early to do the Sam Adams Brewery tour. I expected the tour to be pretty commercial and boring, but it ended up being awesome. Our guide was hilarious and informative, and obviously free beer was nice. He also told us it would be a good idea to visit Doyle's Cafe. We fell right into that tourist trap, but we enjoyed it. We went and got dinner around the stadium and then headed into Fenway Park. I liked Fenway Park because it's different from most other stadiums you go to. Because it's old I guess it seems a little more charming. It also doesn't seem as huge. I feel like any seat that you could sit in would be a  good seat. My favorite part was when someone hit a homerun over the Green Monster. My least favorite part was that the game was 15 innings long. Overall, though, I think it was a nice day in Boston and a nice way to spend Matt's 30th birthday.

Maine

After our long drive to Burlington and spending a day there, we went to Maine. Matt's family has a cottage in Wells, which is on the southern coastline. We spent the majority of the week visiting the pool and Drake Island Beach (we determined this was our favorite the last time we visited). Had you told me in my younger years that I would be vacationing in Maine, I would have had my doubts. I never really thought of Maine as a summer vacation destination, but it's great. It's not super hot and humid like the south, but it's still warm enough (most of the time) to go to the beach and pool. The ocean is freezing, but to me that's not a big deal. 

Matt's mom came to help us make lobsters one evening (more on this later as a recipe of the week), and another evening we went to one of our favorite restaurants ever, Joshua's. On our last day we drove along the coast to see the lighthouse in the background, visit Flo's hot dogs, and get some ice cream. We then continued on our way to Massachusetts to celebrate Matt and his sister's birthday as well as his dad's. It was a great week!

One Year

Burlington

I have a goal of visiting all 50 states. Vermont was one of the last states on the eastern half of the US and since we planned to vacation in Maine this summer we decided to make a quick trip to Vermont, specifically Burlington, first. 

It took us about 10.5 hours to get there...there were some rough points along the drive, but overall I think it went pretty well. We got to Burlington just in time for dinner. Multiple people recommended the Farm House Tap and Grill located downtown in the Church Street Marketplace. The Farm House Tap and Grill was awesome. They feature local farms and breweries which means everything is super fresh. As you have probably figured out I love food, cooking, and restaurants. Matt on the other hand eats to live. This is probably the first restaurant that got Matt inspired about food. Without prompting, Matt talked about how great everything we had to eat was. I was extremely impressed by his food dialogue. After dinner we walked around Church Street. 

Church Street, and Burlington in general, is very reminiscent of all of my adventures in Boulder. Church Street is a smaller version of Boulder's Pearl Street. They both feature shops and a bunch of restaurants. I'm fairly certain you could go out to eat in Burlington for a month and find new and great places everyday. The people watching was also great. The next morning we went to the waterfront on Lake Champlain to take a walk. This was the most disappointing part of the trip as the weather was very overcast that morning. 

After viewing the lake we went back to Church Street to visit some of the stores that were closed the night before. The biggest gem that we found was Saratoga Olive Oil Co. This place was amazing. They had 3 of my top food loves: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and sea salt. Seriously it was amazing, another place that even got Matt excited. After our extended time in the olive oil store we decided to head to Massachusetts, but on the way stopped in Waterbury, VT at the Ben and Jerry's factory. The wait for tours was too long, but we did get some ice cream and viewed some other parts of the grounds.

After leaving Vermont we continued our week long vacation in Maine and Massachusetts. We had lots of good times along the way. Stay tuned for future posts on our vacation :)