new england – emerald city diaries

bean town.

our thoughts & prayers are with boston today as tragedy continues to unfold. i can’t even believe what i am hearing & seeing. i will be holding my loved ones a little closer this weekend.

xo M

image via

i love reading yearly highlights on other blogs & even though i try to keep up on the updates via this blog, there are hopefully a few fun things to share that you haven’t heard before. here’s the rundown of 2012:

january: i donated blood for the first {& last} time. we dined at emmer & rye in queen anne with my friend beth ann who was in town visiting. we survived snopocolypse 2012. the repairs on the jetta were finally completed from my rear-ending in november. sadie had surgery to get a small lump removed & have her teeth cleaned.

february: we took a trip to new england & managed to visit all six new england states. we spent a long weekend in boston. i celebrated my 27 {yikes!} birthday & valentine’s day with my love in manchester, new hampshire. we celebrated thanksgiving in february with my law school friends {this is a reoccurring event in which my friend miriam cooks up a big thanksgiving dinner at various times of the year}. we celebrated leap year!

march: my mom visited for a long weekend. i oversaw work to the townhouse {new venting for the dryer}. we house-hunted on the weekends with our realtor padraic. i started & completed all three books in the hunger games series. we saw the hunger games at the IMAX. we saw {& were disappointed by} king tut at the pacific science center {no tut, just his stuff}. aaron took a work trip to vegas. we made our first {& only} offer on a house. our offer was accepted!

april: we took a post-offer tour of our new house. we celebrated easter dinner with my grandmother. we showed the townhouse to potential new tenants. i co-hosted a baby shower for amanda. we packed up all of our belongings for the big move. we closed on our house after signing lots of paperwork & handing over a very large check. we moved.

may: we were rear-ended {this better not become an annual event}. my mom & dad visited for a long weekend & helped with some house projects. we celebrated my grandmother’s 90th birthday! we celebrated aaron’s 29th birthday! i took on my first pro bono case with VAIJ. we hosted a small dinner party with old idaho friends kami, travis, & their adorable daughter olive. we spent a night on the town in bellevue at aaron’s organization’s ship party with lots of aaron’s co-workers.

june: we saw dia frampton in concert at chop suey. we hosted a small dinner party with my law school friend marcus, his then-fiancée katy, & their beagle maggie. padraic & his partner justin threw us an awesome housewarming party! we ventured down to alabama for andy & hailey’s wedding. i had lots of phone interviews.

july: we attended herschel’s first birthday party {the son of one of my law school friends}. we celebrated the fourth of july! i started going to fitness classes with my neighbor leanne at community fitness. we hosted a small dinner party with andy & hailey, just back from their honeymoon! we attended thanksgiving in july at miriam’s. sadie & i drove down to idaho. i got my haircut & had drinks with my CBC {high school} girlfriends. we loaded up the car & took a roadtrip {sadie included} to stevenson, wa for marcus & katy’s wedding. we saw the dark knight rises at the IMAX.

august: we celebrated our second wedding anniversary with a picnic dinner at greenlake! we attended our first neighborhood potluck & met lots of our neighbors. we joined a summer bocce ball league with ben & sarah. i did yoga in the park with our neighbors – the friends – & tens of other people. i shopped & noshed with my friend ashley who was in town on a work trip. we attended the pratt’s housewarming party {a couple i met & befriend while i was in americorps}. we attended padraic’s wig birthday party. i met my pro bono client. i was offered a position doing media license management & started working. my bff carlie came into town – our first house guest! we attended a moroccan dinner feast at ben & sarah’s house. aaron’s parents visited seattle for a week.

september: we attended a final farewell summer bbq. we visited indiana to see family & surprise meg at her baby shower. we attended a colts game with our friends colt & erin. we celebrated sadie’s eighth birthday!

october: we visited peru & got to hike around one of the new seven wonders of the world machu picchu. my mom & sister anya visited for a long weekend. my friend meg was in town to visit! aaron made an unexpected trip back to indiana to attend his late grandmother’s service. we attended ghouls near greenlake, ben & sarah’s annual halloween bash, as a somecard. we celebrated halloween with our very first trick-or-treaters!

november: aaron attended a week-long conference for work & stayed downtown. i watched the election results while painting the bathroom trim & texting aaron updates. we hosted our first {vegetarian} thanksgiving. we spent the long holiday weekend working on the house.

december: we attended a housewarming party for amanda, george, & madeleine. we brunched with our neighbors – the friends – at the 5 spot in queen anne. my mom visited for a long weekend. i brought back a pinterest christmas & recruited some friends to join in on the fun. we celebrated the holiday season with six holiday parties with friends & co-workers. i won rookie of the year at work. we enjoyed a double-date night in bellevue with some newly engaged friends. we loaded up the car with presents & made the trek to idaho for the week of christmas. we celebrated christmas! we made it safely back to seattle only one day delayed. we plan to ring in the new year with friends & watch the space needle firework show.

reflecting back on this year, i am reminded how blessed we are & also how different this year has been than the year previous. it has been such a wonderful year & ringing in a new one is a bit bittersweet.

how was your 2012 – was it a year to remember or are you itching to start 2013 already?

see highlights of 2011 here.

a visit to new england: maine, connecticut, rhode island & massachusetts.

we headed out east from manchester for maine. though we wanted to drive further along the coast, we didn’t have enough time. we stopped in kittery for some lobster (duh!) lunch at warren’s & even sent some fresh lobster home! we drove a bit further into maine to york to see the nubble lighthouse. maine was lovely.

on our last day, we headed south from manchester towards connecticut. we didn’t spend much time there, but did have a delicious lunch. we stayed pretty far north so we would have a straight shot over to rhode island.

rhode island was our next stop & it was the one i was looking most forward to. it is probably because it is the smallest of all of the states (i think being small means you really like small things), but there is something about rhode island that has always charmed me. i literally squealed when we crossed over the state line from connecticut & then made aaron pull the car over so i could get a picture with the state sign. we drove to brown university so that we could stop and take in rhode island. plus, my great uncle attended brown & lived in providence for some time, so it seemed like we needed to see it. the school is right in the city near RISD & as we drove thru it, i couldn’t help but fall in love with providence!

our last stop in new england (on our way back to boston for our flight) was in milton, massachusetts. milton is a very small suburb of boston & it is where my grandmother & great uncle grew up. they both attended milton high school & i was chatting on the phone with my grandmother as i was standing in front of her alma mater – that was kind of fun!

well, that wraps up our trip to new england! it isn’t a place that i daydreamed about visiting (i like to save my daydreams for sandy beach locales!), but it was such a fun trip & it made my thirty before thirty list.

have you made it to new england? what places are on your travel list?

a visit to new england: new hampshire & vermont.

from boston, we rented a car & drove north to new hampshire. we stayed in manchester, NH for the remainder of the week, sort of a jumping off point for the rest of our time in new england. manchester is a really cute little town with an amazing number of restaurants right on elm street in downtown. while it may have been nice to stay in other places, like say a bed & breakfast, it was so nice to have to unpack & repack only once! we celebrated my birthday & valentine’s day with a five-course dinner (which we split) at XO on Elm – it was delish! we also had to try the highly recommended dancing lion.

after settling into new hampshire, we took a short day trip up to vermont. it still amazes me that you can get to another state in just two short hours (that doesn’t happen where we live!). our first stop was in waterbury to visit the one & only ben & jerry’s factory. it was amazing! we got a tour of the factory & got to sample a never-been-released coffee cake ice cream.

we also drove just a little bit further into vermont to visit the von trapp family lodge. you probably only know of one von trapp family. are you quietly singing “doe a deer a female deer”? if you are, you are right on! the von trapp family was made famous from the movie the sound of music which was loosely based on their lives in austria during ww II. apparently waterbury, vermont looks much like the “mountains” of austria (i put mountains in quotes because any one who has actually seen a mountain cannot actually say that anything in new england is actually a mountain). originally the von trapp family just had a lodge but today it is quite the winter resort.

have you ever ventured into vermont?

a visit to new england: boston.

{there are lots of photos so i thought it would be best to share the trip over a couple of posts.}

aaron and i had a chance to visit new england last week as a way to celebrate valentine’s day, my birthday, & to get away just the two of us. while it may not have been the best time to travel (um, winter), we only had a few days of really, really cold (thanks beantown!).

we flew in & out of boston on a direct flight via jetblue & it really lived up to the rave reviews: first checked bag free, nice flight attendants & in-seat tvs. {sidenote: aaron & i both watched in time on the flight home & it was really good. i had never heard of it before but if you haven’t seen it, definitely put it in your netflix queue.}

…

we took the T out to the sam adam’s brewery tour almost as soon as we landed. {this was aaron’s favorite part of the trip; me, not so much.} then we took the party trolley to doyle’s & dined on the best reuben sammie & clam chowder that boston had to offer.

our hotel {the omni parker house} was right on the freedom trial, across the street from the old city hall & just a few short blocks from the boston common. we were able to walk or take the T everywhere we wanted to go, it was fantastic!

even though the red sox were in florida for spring training, we couldn’t miss an opportunity to visit fenway park. it was great to hear the tour & learn about all of the secrets of the old park – it is actually bigger than when i was last here! we got to sit out in the green monster seats – very hard to get tickets for as there is a lottery system each season – & up in the press box – the biggest in the MLB.

while we were strolling around the common, we also visited the granary burying grounds where we paid our respects to mother goose, samuel adams & paul revere.

we also took the T out to cambridge & visited harvard university.

that wraps up our time in boston! stay tuned as i will be posting pics from the rest of our trip.

have you ever been to beantown?

thirty before I am thirty.

number six: visit New England. {pics will be posted soon!} i had never visited any of the new england states before (except for boston) but it has been on my travel list for as long as i can remember. my grandmother is from the boston area and her brother went to school & lived in providence, rhode island, so i feel a bit of a family connection to the area. unfortunately other things just got in the way of ever visiting – living on the west coast, lots of other places on the travel list – until now! aaron & i were able to visit the entirety of new england while we were vacationing the week before last! we may not have thoroughly visited each state – i still want to visit cape cod, portland, burlington & new haven, to name a few – but we did drive thru & stop to see at least one town in every new england state.

number nineteen: go on a four state roadtrip. this to do goes hand-in-hand with visit new england as it was pretty easy to drive thru four new england states (much more so than western states!). we actually drove thru all six new england states {can you name them all?} but not all in one day. though on our way out of town, we did actually complete the four state roadtrip – so exciting! we left manchester, new hampshire & drove south thru massachusetts on our way to connecticut; we stopped for lunch in connecticut & drove east to providence, rhode island; then we headed back north & drove thru milton, massachusetts (where my grandmother & great uncle are from) on our way the boston airport.