Summer Plans...

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial kick-off to summer, so we decided to celebrate it with a trip to the beach! We went to Kennebunkport, Maine for the weekend. We decided to go there after getting an email offer from a "resort" that got our information from the Boston Travel show that we went to a few months back. See, mass marketing works! The hotel was adequate but nothing special, but we had a nice, relaxing weekend. Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Kennebunkport Memorial Day

The weather wasn't great, including one very overcast day, but since we were so close to the outlet stores of Freeport, we took a ride to do some shopping. I even managed to find my wedding outfit at a most unlikely place. It will be a nice, summery outfit, perfect for our garden wedding. Speaking of, we've been slowly finalizing the plans, and have almost finished the invitations. Because we're having the wedding and reception on separate days, we actually have two invitations. We sent out the ceremony invitations already, and the reception ones should get mailed soon.

In addition to our Maine adventure, at the beginning of the month, Jaimee and I participated in the New York Five Boro bike ride. It's a 40 mile ride through all five boroughs of New York City. We had fun visiting New York and it was definitely fun to ride through the city, but the ride was overcrowded, and there were actually bike traffic jams. At one point, because of construction on a bridge we were stuck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (without cars) for about an hour. It was pretty crazy. We tried to get some pictures, including a few to show how many people were on the ride:

Tour de Boro 2011

We got back from Maine to super warm weather in Boston, which is gratifying after such a long, cool Spring. We're definitely looking forward to the summer.

Family Filled Weekends

Our weekends have been very full of family activities lately. Its been great fun to see so many family members this month and I must admit that I've loved the chance to get dressed up for a change!

We started the month with my bridal shower...my favorite day so far this year. I got to get dressed up, wear ridiculous shoes, and see almost my entire female family in one day! Here I am in the library at Cyprian Keyes.

We also managed to celebrate the birthdays of Asa and my mom and step-mother on that same day (enter the male side of the family!) While my family often celebrates multiple birthdays in one celebration and with one cake, its not often...or ever...that we've celebrated my mom's birthday and Sandi's at the same party, even though they share the same birthday.

The following weekend Asa, my sisters and I all conspired to throw a surprise anniversary party for my dad and Sandi. While we weren't able to surprise Dad, we did shock Sandi!

We had so much fun planning the party and were very pleased by the big family turn out. We served Mexican food as well as margaritas and sangria. One of Janelle's friends made and delivered a delicious cake and I made an apple crisp for dessert. While it isn't apple season...it was the dessert served 25 years ago at Dad and Sandi's wedding. Here's Asa, Jonah and I having a quick cuddle before Jonah got wisked home to bed.

The next day we raced back to our apartment to spend the afternoon with my mom, Nate, Abby, and Shaun. Mom was still in town after her surprise appearance at my shower. Asa and I were excited to be able to host her again at our apartment! It was the first time Shaun made it to our place and it was a great day for a walk in the Arboretum. Here we are on Peter's Hill, a short walk from our apartment.

We don't only spend time with my family, you know. We love spending time with Asa's family and while they aren't in as close proximity to us as my family, we really look forward to our weekends away visiting them.  Asa's Aunt Betsy and Uncle Neil, who live in Vermont, invited us up for a weekend and we were thrilled to be able to go to Goose Landing (their home) after a great morning of cake tasting for our wedding reception. We are going to have our wedding ceremony at Goose Landing this summer and we have offered to help them with the yard work as much as we can before the wedding...so we did some raking while we were there this time.

This weekend we were able to go to a nice Easter Brunch with my dad, Sandi, Janelle, Michelle, Russ, Meme, Auntie Linda and my cousin Matt. We went to the Grafton Inn for a nice brunch and then traveled back to Dad's house for a fun game of bocce.  

The next couple of weekends we'll be heading to New York to see Asa's cousins Lexy and Vahop in Brooklyn and Asa's Aunt Lisa and Uncle Dick in Catskill. Really looking forward to those adventures as well!

It's Nice to Be Loved

Living in New England we are lucky to be surrounded by loving and supportive family and friends. Last weekend we experienced that love first-hand when Jaimee's step-mom Sandi organized a beautiful and well-attended bridal shower, in anticipation of our wedding this July. Jaimee's sisters enjoyed planning the party, which was originally supposed to be a surprise, but because of Jaimee's sleuthing skills, she found out about it well before hand. Here's Jaimee with her sisters and step-mom:

From Wedding Shower

Jaimee's mom did do a surprise visit all the way from Idaho, so at least we were able to get one surprise:

From Wedding Shower

Jaimee received many awesome gifts, that we've put to use right away, including a few sets of nice glasses, an amazing coffee maker and various other kitchen items. Some of items will take some getting used to, such the set of "rolo" shot glasses, which I found out pretty quickly you need to hold on to when pouring:

After the shower, Jaimee's dad hosted a joint birthday party for me and Jaimee's step-mom (she's April 3, I'm April 5). It warms my heart to be part of such a loving family:

From Wedding Shower

Readers of my last blog post took note of the fact that I said I didn't get the memo regarding a yellow biking jacket, so one of my gifts was a bright yellow jacket along with a memo:

Now when I do my group bike rides (or even when riding solo), I'll be highly visible and safe!

We survived the winter

With April just around the corner and a full week into Spring, I'm happy to report that we made it through a New England winter. And as far as winters go, it was a good one. If by good, I mean lots of snow, and very cold. I'll admit I'm glad to see that Spring is here, some flowers are sprouting, and last Friday it actually hit 70 degrees for a minute. Of course, Monday saw snow flurries and it turned cold, but warmer weather is definitely coming soon.

I also survived a winter of bike commuting. When winter began I wasn't sure when I'd stop riding, but turns out I never did. I just bundled up, put on studded tires and kept at it. It was actually kind of fun. Since most of my commute is on a bike trail, I had the trail mostly to myself. Now that the weather has gotten nicer there are a lot more riders out there. Which is fine too. In fact, I'm become friends with some of the other riders. On a commute earlier in the winter I started chatting with another biker and it turns out he runs a Roslindale Bike Club called RozzieBikes. They do various events in and around Roslindale including group commutes into Boston on the last Friday of the month. I joined them yesterday. There were only three of us, and they went painfully slow, and we took the longest route possible, but it was a beautiful morning so I didn't mind too much. We even stopped for a picture near the Charles River. I guess I missed the memo to wear my yellow jacket:

Jaimee has also been riding with me sometimes. She bought a bike last fall and we've been doing little rides around the neighborhood, or over to my sister's house in Jamaica Plain. But otherwise, not a whole lot to report. We were interviewed for a fellow travel blog a few weeks ago. Some other around-the-world travelers, whose blog I follow asked us to write up a short description of our experiences WWOOFing, as they are doing a series of posts about planning an around-the-world trip. The post is about working while on the road. I love reading about how they travel. It's definitely not the way we traveled, and they had two to three times our budget. I like how they state on their on their budget page, "we don't need all that much: WiFi, air conditioning, and a clean room are more than sufficient for us." I thought when I read that, that's like three more requirements than what we had. But, they were working while on the road, and Jaimee and I have both admitted (well, Jaimee more than me) that if we were to do it again, we'd probably spend a little bit more per night. A few extra dollars can make a huge difference in many countries.

Anyway, as I've said before, although I love reading about other travelers, I sometimes have to take a break because I get too nostalgic for the road. I miss our trip so much; it's crazy to think it's been almost 10 months since we've been back. We've settled in quite nicely here in Boston, and we love it here, but I still don't know if it feels like home. I recently finished reading a great travel book, called The Lunatic Express. It's about a journalist who travels around the world, purposely seeking out the most dangerous pubic transit he can find. Not only does he go to some crazy places, but he talks about the meaning of home, and what it means to him to travel. I could definitely relate, and I think some of our travels would rival the situations he found himself in.