A Trip To Iowa For A Family Graduation

Jotting down and scheduling this post ahead of time, as when it's published I'll be away on a lovely trip for a friend's wedding (plus a vacation we tacked on to the end of it). May is a busy, travel-filled month for us. Here's a recap of our recent trip to Iowa to attend my cousin's college graduation!

We arrived on a Wednesday morning around 1:30pm after flying into Des Moines. Even though Chris and I travel a decent amount, we don't typically fly together. Often, he's visiting me or we're meeting up somewhere! So it always feels like a treat when we actually are on the same flight and sit together. 

After landing, we picked up our rental car. For some reason getting a completely ridiculous but fun Ford Bronco off of Turo was the same price as renting something far more boring from the airport, so how could we not?

We spent the rest of the day meeting up with my cousin Ena and her boyfriend at Zombie Burger, then heading to my great Aunt Mary's house where we were going to stay for the weekend. We went for a walk, had a coffee run to Reading in Public (which was so cute), and then dinner at ice cream at home. 

The next morning, we had a slightly lazy morning before heading out to pick up my mom and aunt from the airport and then getting brunch as a big group at The Breakfast Club. After splitting up into a "nap" group and "explore" group, we headed out to the Des Moines Botanical Garden. My Aunt Mary volunteers there and it was so fun for her to show us around! After that we explored the Sculpture Park, before Chris and I stole away just the two of us for a happy hour drink at Exile Brewing. We followed that up with a coffee run to Smokey Row before taking a family drive about an hour south for dinner in my cousin's college town. 

Friday morning Chris and I went out for breakfast just the two of us to La Mie Bakery. The pastries were incredible! It was so hard to choose and honestly I wish I could have tried everything. We also ordered Cafe Au Laits which have been our go-to coffee order when we want something special but want it last longer than a latte. We picked up my mom and Aunt Mary for lunch at the local drugstore where I think every single customer knew Aunt Mary, and we each ordered a huge ice cream soda along with our sandwiches. 

This photo cracks me up.

The rest of Friday included resting up before heading back down to my cousin's college town to grocery shop for a family BBQ, check into a motel for the night, grab dinner with some other family, and then go out with a bunch of college kids. It was a good time! 

Saturday morning we woke up in town and had a much-needed greasy breakfast sandwich at Smokey Row while watching a downpour. We showed up early to graduation to save seats, then has a family BBQ while keeping an eye on a tornado watch. We even heard the tornado sirens going off a few towns over! A very midwestern moment. After a lovely day chilling with family and sitting outside, Chris, my cousin and I stopped at a tap room for a few last drinks before Chris and I drove back to Des Moines. Sunday morning we were up bright and early, on our flight, and sitting in our apartment by 1:30! 

All in all, a great few days with family and a wonderful little re-set while life at home and work was starting to feel chaotic. Looking forward to an even longer reset this week!

Winter 2023: A Scrapbook

 

Somehow, winter has come and gone and I am typing this while snuggled up on the couch on a relatively warm March evening. I am currently enjoying what I think must be the best part of any long-term partnership: Chris is currently making dinner, and has also explicitly said that he doesn't want me to help or to talk to him so he can cook while watching TV. The beginning of relationships are so fun, but I think my heart is partial to being able to give each other space without feelings being hurt. This is what a marriage of two introverts looks like, and I love it. 

January and February have been jam-packed with activities and have been busy work wise, but somehow, I still feel like there's been a lot of time to just...exist? Throughout most of my adult life, I have considered myself a little better at working than at playing. From 18 until very recently, I've held down multiple jobs at once, had periods of life where I was training skating almost 20 hours a week, and been a student. I love the purpose that comes with being a "busy" person, and overall I think I'm more emotionally even when I keep my calendar relatively full. It is not good for me mentally, however, when that drive pushes me over the edge into anxious territory. I watched this Tik Tok from our light, our life, our love: Chelsea Fagan recently, and honestly have been thinking about it for weeks. I know I have internalized a sense of always needing to be busy, and I do struggle with my self worth when I do something as simple as take a day off because I'm sick. I want to be better at reframing the parts of my life that are self-imposed, instead of making myself a victim of my owl compulsion to do everything.

Heading off to Portland ME!

Used bookstore in Portland.

One of my goals for the New Year was centered around working more intelligently, and no longer allowing the constant sense of "always being working" to keep messing with my personal life. I decided to set a hard limit on the admin side of coaching. Since the start of the year, I have a hard rule about not working when I get home from coaching (depending on the day, this could be as early as 6:30 or as late as 9pm). It's been life changing! At night, I have no agenda and just hang out with Chris and Bear, make dinner, watch movies, or read my book. In the morning, I wake up with a lot less dread because I gave myself time to unwind the night before, and I've been so much more focused at getting stuff done during the day because I don't have the option of figuring stuff out in the evening. It also makes me way more likely to see friends in the evening, because I have no sense of keeping the time available in case I need it for work (which I always did when it was an option). 

I think this mindset of actually "leaving" work at the end of the day has been especially important for me right now. Over the past few months, I've been working through a lot of self doubt and inadequacy, and all the shame that comes with feeling those things while also "getting" to "live my dreams." Weird territory! So it's satisfying (and grounding) to feel so proud of my personal life at the moment. For perhaps the first time, I feel like my life is full of friends, adventures, satisfying relationships, hobbies, and quiet time to lay on the couch with the dog. I love my personal life right now. It is joyful and playful and creative and life giving. I am proud of the years it has taken for me to cultivate this, and I don't want to take it for granted. 

Saturday afternoon relaxation of choice: Youtube and a lunch beer.

Tacos and beer on the coldest day of the yar.

We've made room for so many adventures over this winter: In January, Chris and I took the train up to Portland ME to go to bars and walk around bookstores. It snowed SO MUCH but we loved it even when we got chilled, and catching the train back home was so fun. Towards the end of the month we had friends over for what I called a Friendsgiving (even though we were well past the holidays, I served pasta, and the only remotely festive thing was a pumpkin cake). It was the most people we'd ever had in our apartment for a party and I LOVED it. This will be the year of parties. In the beginning of February, we also experienced a few days with below zero weather. While we mostly stayed in, we did sneak out for tacos and beer at one of our favorite walking-distance spots and sitting in the warm bar while we watched frost form on the windows was exhilarating. For Valentines Day, we decided to be a Proper Grown Married Couple and got reservations for the Saturday before at Cava in Portsmouth, a *fancy* tapas place that we'd only been to once before. We sat at the bar and did their fixed menu option and really enjoyed it.  

Also for Valentine's Day, I made Chris a homemade coffee cake. By a stroke of luck, I unlocked all my own nostalgia: this recipe tasted exactly like the Krusteaz mixes my mom would buy and  make on Sunday mornings before church. Also in the homemade date category: February we experienced a Disney resurgence and watched so many movies, new and old. While Turning Red was probably my favorite of all the new watches, my favorite night was when we watched Ratatouille while eating homemade ratatouille, with crusty bread, a cheese board, and wine. Probably my favorite at-home date nights we've ever done. 

Ratatouille date night.

UNH Hockey Game

Mid-February, I took a leap and got a wolf cut. I love it! And honestly feel like this is the most "myself" I've ever looked like. Styling bangs again is a trip but thankfully I'm much better than my 13 year old self was (scroll through the archive for proof, at your own risk). Other highlights of the month were seeing a comedy show at WHYM brewery, going to a UNH hockey game with friends, finding what we believe to be the best happy hour in town (it's The Brick on Wednesdays), and my first time night skiing in four years. To round out the winter, we saw Couch in Burlington VT with friends at Nectar's, a small bar and concert spot downtown and walking distance from their apartment.

Seeing Couch in Burlington VT.

Overall, an epically full godsend of a Winter. I'm so grateful for my friends, my husband, our sweet Bear and Charlie, and the chance to be out here trying new things. Spring is looming and looking busy, so I'm excited for: soaking in and really noticing the sunshine and longer days, creating more at-home date nights, doing some fun travel, and getting outside more often. Thanks for being here! <3

big thoughts about community and living a real life (& photos from Burlington, VT)

 

Jesus. This spring. 

Work has been great but literally so busy. I am only beginning to pull myself out of a very intense feeling of overwhelm...the kind of overwhelm where you have 300 unread emails and have to write down "text so and so back" to force yourself to do so. I have a ridiculous stack of random sticky notes and long lists that I've been carrying around with me from room to room, just attempting to make some sense of everything. It's not really worked! But we're getting there. And then....all the mess of the world this week. I don't have words for tragedy like this, but I also know not acknowledging it is worse. I don't know what to do about it, but I do know that we as a community must be less stagnant and passive about every important issue we face. Plenty of people who know more than me have pulled together great resource lists; Cup of Jo is a good one. 

In our own families and households and friend groups and neighborhoods, we must all be more engaged and more human. More supportive. More caring. More discerning. More ready to take on the work of large changes, and more consistent with our practice of small changes. In this moment, I want to work on: being a better family member, specifically an "aunt" to Chris' very little cousin and a supporter of my own younger cousins; a more generous community member with my time and attention; being a more empathetic observer of my neighbor's lives; and more willing to sit with the news, research, and develop opinions about changes. 

Even before this week, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to be careful not to disconnect from the world. Even the grief, even the pain: I want to bear witness to all, to feel the range of the human experience. One of the parts of our upcoming move we are most excited about is being back in town. Our current apartment is a perfectly nice, white-walled unit in a duplex. There is a neatly paved driveway filled with cars. There are fine, quiet neighbors. Someone cuts the grass every Friday. The whole town uses the exact same trash and recycling bins. We live in a cul-de-sac, with many nice, quiet houses. We don't know the neighbors...sometimes we pass someone when we walk the dog, but no one knows (or cares) who we are. When we first moved here, we were excited for more space. Isn't that what we're always searching for? The picket fence? The privacy? But as our move approaches, I am most excited for getting back to the messiness of buildings crammed together. I want to wake up to slammed doors late at night and loud, happy drunk voices in the street. I want to walk by people smoking on their front steps and past piles of free junk on the side of the road. I want to notice people working odd hours, and staying up too late on Tuesdays. I want to to see people existing outside of the apathetic suburbia molds. I want to feel the energy of the first really warm weekend and the quiet of misty Monday mornings. I want the hustle of digging everyone out after a snow storm and the ability to say "let's grab a drink" without grabbing the car keys. 

The truth is as much as I'd love a yard for kids and the ability to plant gardens wherever I pleased, the joy and community I really want to belong to doesn't seem to be here. I want to be throwing elbows with the people fighting for parking spaces and not taking tomorrow for granted. My people are the baristas and bartenders and artists that still hold onto their 9-5's, not the guy who's sat at the same desk for 30 years and thinks we could buy a house if only we stopped spending all our money on coffee.

My childhood was isolated. At times I loved it, and at times it felt wrong. There's a lot of gray area to be found between the good and the bad of a homeschooled, conservative Christian upbringing, and I was certainly firmly rooted in the gray. The one thing I always felt, though, was utterly disconnected to the world around me. My lack of trend following and pop culture knowledge was praised by adults, and scorned by peers. I took a lot of pride in not liking what everybody else seemed to. But I also felt a lot of shame for having no grasp on what "real life" felt like. Real life is what everyone else was living; I was caught aloof and uninvolved, like I was watching a goofy sitcom where the outcome didn't matter to me. Whatever my childhood was, it wasn't living. 

As an adult, I often still feel behind. The difference now, though, is that I can choose to be more connected instead of continuing to hide away. I can choose to not just talk about compassion, joy, being thoughtful, being neighborly, but to really act in that way. To shape my own life into the way I want the world to feel. There is much to be done on a macro level enable us to live as more whole communities. But the pieces we can really control are the small things, that take place inside our own kitchens and churches and bars and front steps. I want to take this move as a chance to be putting that work first.

All of these pictures are from our quick trip up to Burlington, VT in mid-May. Chris drove up from NJ, and I came up from NH. We got an Air Bnb downtown for two nights. It was a ridiculously hot weekend--in the 90's!--but we had so much fun walking around, going to our favorite used bookstore, and trying new sandwich and coffee places. We got to see my best friend and her boyfriend for a quick visit, and tried a very cool new-to-us restaurant called Poco which was so small, intimate, beautiful, and delicious. Our main reason for coming up was actually to get to see Sal Vulcano's show! I had bought Chris tickets back at Christmas and it ended up getting postponed, but we finally got to see him! So fun. This was our first time being in Burlington when it wasn't freezing cold, and we loved it. 

Just Wow!

This past Friday, February 12th, Chris and I got ENGAGED!!

Back at Christmas, I had booked us a two-night stay in a Yurt in Chatham (near Jackson/Conway), New Hampshire for Chris. We had missed our typical traveling so much over the year! And Chris was such a supporter of me over all the changes in 2020. I wanted us to have a fun getaway, that was in-state and therefore could happen even with restrictions, and that was isolated enough that we could "forget" about the pandemic. 

The yurt was incredible. We snow-shoed in with our stuff, about a mile from where we parked the car. The yurt had plenty of room and a woodstove for heat. Bear came with us, and was just living his best life. Going outside whenever he wanted! Running around without a leash! Spending the whole day with both of us! He's such a mountain dog. 

We arrived on Thursday night, and spent Friday morning snuggled up reading and drinking coffee. Later on, we pulled on our gear and went snow shoeing on all the snow mobile trails that crossed the property. On the way back, we stopped at a clearing where we could see the mountains in the distance. After a beer, and a PB & J, Chris proposed! It was the sweetest. I was so surprised, and honestly wasn't even processing what was happening. My only regret was not being giddier while it was happening! But I was plenty giddy after (and still am, tbh). 

The rest of the trip was bonkers, but so worth it and a little funny in retrospect. Friday night we went out for an engagement drink. By the time we got back up to the yurt, the fire had gone out and the stove was too cold for me to get a new one going. We tried for an hour and a half but couldn't get it to start. Finally, Chris called it and we hiked back down to the car at 10pm and slept there. In the moment, I was really frustrated. But it is a hilarious story. 

Saturday morning, we both were wide awake at 5am (the car isn't the most comfortable, after all). We drove to a Dunkin Donuts and then drive all around watching the sunrise over the mountains. We ran into Walmart and bought a Duraflame log, then hiked back up to our yurt and started the woodstove. We snow shoed a bit more, packed up, and had some time to just enjoy the yurt for the last few hours. We stopped for a fun lunch on the way home, and had a great, talkative drive. 

I was completely surprised. We've talked about it a lot, obviously, and I knew it was going to happen at some point this year. But I definitely wasn't expecting it this early, or on that particular trip. I didn't even know he had a ring, and for whatever reason, I thought I would just know when he had one. It was the best surprise!

Ecstatic doesn't really cut it. I am so excited for this, and for us! This feels like the perfect timing. I love the time and experiences we've had together so far, and they give me confidence that we will be able to continue to grow together. And I love that we aren't waiting, just because we're relatively young. I am so excited to get to start this phase of our relationship. 

I also just feel...different? Like much more grown-up. And much more motivated to get back to working on building the life I really want, and "correcting" the parts of myself that I feel like are just a little immature. I feel responsible for something incredible fragile, and important. If I'm going to be a married person, I want to put in the work to make sure I'm bringing a solid, mature, and less chaotic version of myself to it. 

Chris put it really well. He said, "It feels like one less part of life that's abstract." YES! It's not a someday anymore, we are really doing this! We are really showing up and doing the things. 

I love you Chris! Are we really doing this? Just wow!!

a weekend in Bristol, VT

Hey friends.

Chris and I spent last weekend up in Bristol, Vermont, tagging along on his parent's leaf-peeping getaway. The forecast said rain, but the weather turned out to be perfect: crisp without being cold, lots of sun, and crazy blue skies. I have lived in New England my entire life, and I will never get over how beautiful autumn is. The speed and vibrancy of the change surprises me every year.

We have been to Bristol and the surrounding towns (Vergennes, Lincoln,Middlebury, and Starksborough) three times over the last year. Exploring new places is always exciting, but I've loved getting to know this little town. It is so fun to begin to know our way around, and arrive looking forward to visiting favorite spots. So far, we've been twice in the fall (October '18 and last weekend) with Chris' parents, and then once over this past Memorial Day weekend for camping. It's beautiful and charming both times of year. 

This time, we left in the morning on Saturday and met his parents at Oktoberfest at Mount Snow. It was wicked crowded, but this was my first Oktoberfest and I had a great time trying perogies and carrying around steins of local beer. Plus there was polka music and plenty of people dressed up, so even waiting in line for food felt like an activity.

Bristol is about 2.5 hours away from Mount Snow, so once we were done we loaded up again and headed to our Air BnB! I loved this place. The inside looked like a general store, the bedrooms were cozy and filled with books, and they had a woodstove in the living room! My parents have always heated the house with wood, but it was weirdly exciting to make and keep a fire going in a new-to-me-stove. Coupled with no service and slow internet, it made the whole weekend so refreshing. I could sit and stare at a fireplace for hours.

The Air BnB was also on Sentinel Farm, so we got to meet their horses. The cows weren't on the property, but they also raised their own beef, and had freezers in the back of our kitchen filled with their products! I will forever be interested in how small, full-time farmers make their businesses work, and it was very cool to how many different projects they had going. 

It was pretty late on Saturday night by the time we headed out to dinner, so we went to Cubbers, which is an adorable little sandwich and pizza place on Bristol's main street. Super casual, but really good pizza, and the staff were very friendly. 

After dinner, we walked across the street to our favorite Bristol spot: Hatch 31. Last October, Chris and I stumbled on this bar while waiting to meet his parents, and we have been in love with it ever since. They always have live music, we've had the same bartender all three times, the locals that go there are always high energy and super friendly. The first time we went there, there was a five or six person folk band all playing instruments and leaning in to sing around one microphone. Something about that set our hearts on fire, and we've looked forward to dropping in every visit since. Hatch 31 is a treasure.

After sleeping in Sunday morning, we stopped for breakfast at Bristol Cliffs Cafe. It's a fresh, bright breakfast and lunch spot, with lots of muffins, eggs, and sandwiches. We enjoyed noticing all the different salt & pepper shakers on the tables, our favorites being the potato shakers on the table next to us. I got an egg sandwich with lots of veggies and onions, and loved it. Sometimes eggs taste weird at restaurants, but these were obviously fresh and local. I also picked up a slice of carrot cake and a slice of cheesecake to have later that night. The carrot cake was amazing!! The cheese cake was a little gross. All in all though, I can't wait to go again. 

After breakfast, we walked along some trails to enjoy the scenery. We weren't looking for a real hike, so we just did part of the Cooley Glen-Emily Proctor Trail. I know this isn't breaking news, but guys: fall in Vermont is beautiful. The sky and the leaves and the water: everything was perfect. And the farm houses! Every two feet I was shouting "that one! that one! how about that one?!". They were the kind of fields and houses that make you want to be a better person.

After our walk, we headed over to Middlebbury VT, a little bit to the south, to Happy Valley Orchard. They make incredible cider donuts and their own apple cider, so of course we got some. I also bought a really cute pumpkin called a 'sunburst pumpkin', which is small and perfectly round and yellow, with orange streaks. We also took a bunch of photos, because it was beautiful, but also because we took photos here last year, and who doesn't love a side by side?!

2019

2018

After that, we spent a little more time in the Air BnB and then Chris and I headed home! It was the perfect, quick weekend away, and a great excuse to take some time off work and soak in my favorite time of year.

In our year and a half together, Chris and I have managed to explore quite a few places. Our favorites, though, are always the spots that let you see them the way locals do. Nothing gimmicky or touristy, just friendly and unique and authentic. There is something really pleasant about going back to Bristol, and I hope this little tradition continues. 

Other Bristol favorites:

A great camping spot.

Hike to a plane crash.

Local brewery (that also serves rabbit pot pie).

Hipster pizza & beer spot. 

A brewery we haven't been to yet, but can't wait to visit.