I Heart New York & Bean Town

After the marathon Brent, Lori and, and I went down to NY to see the sights. We stayed with our cousin Tara who's husband is attending Columbia University. We really enjoyed visiting Tara and her little girl is super cute.

We thought that we we're going to see the Letterman Show as we were second in a huge line for standby tickets but not a single person got in. We were bummed. We did get a whirlwind NYC experience checking out Central Park, Times Square, Empire State Building, Battery Park (the Statue of Liberty at a distance), Wall Street, Ground Zero, Brooklyn (Grimaldi's pizza was amazing), Greenwich Village, SoHo, The Seinfield restaurant (Tom's), just to name a few things!

We also toured around Boston but didn't get many pictures due to rain. We did take a few pictures downtown near Boston Common on Beacon street right before heading to the airport...That was a good weather day!

Marathon Monday

My brother Brent totally rocked the Boston Marathon finishing it up in only 3hrs 5min!  It was awesome for Brent and Lori to visit all the way from SLC along with my other brother Krister and his wife Sheri who drove up from Philly.  

We had a couple pre-marathon parties which included a lot of eating and hanging out.  We made it down town to Mike's Pastries and had a great Italian dinner in the North End.  

 

  

The bib pinning ceremony: 

 

 

Let the race begin!

 

  

Brent near the finish:

scrub da floor!

The past three days I've become obsessed with getting my kitchen floors clean.  I've mopped, scowered, and scrubbed too many times to count but nothing was really getting the decades of dirt off these floors.  Recently I got a tip from my cousin who also lives in a pre-war building.  She was battling this very same problem and found that steel wool did the trick.  

(You might have to get the right angle on your computer screen to see the contrast in the following pictures. In person the clean to dirty difference is disgustingly dramatic.)

I am only about a quarter of the way complete but I am too sore to continue.  

At this pace I might be done a month from now but it will be worth it!

3/28/09

Yay for visitors!

Karen, (Matt), Josie, & Joel.  

Joel is a cousin to Matt's Dad.

What an amazing and fun family! 

Who knew Matt had his own hall on the Harvard campus!

An Eventful Week!

I had a great week in Philly visiting my sister Megan!  Baby Cora continues to grow and Ryan continues to study.  We also got together with Krister and Sheri for dinner and Sheri is looking especially cute with her little baby bump.

If I were to write out all the things we did this would be a really long post.  So instead here are the highlights:  

• Megan and I both got our hair cut
  
• We finished the last must do project in the condo which was painting the kitchen. (It looks awesome by the way.  No more sponge painted walls and sunflower tiles on the backsplash!)
• Cora got her ears pierced!!!!

I also have to mention that Megan taught me how to reconstitute beans to make an amazing black bean soup, and she also made cinnamon rolls from scratch!  YUM!

  

And so it goes....

And so it goes.... This was the title of my blog for the purpose of describing my life at that time. While we expect several more rounds of transition with Matt still in grad school, I feel that the most emotional parts are behind us. Goodbye to the jobs and work we were so proud of, to our beautifully restored house and lush yard, to the furniture and the extra household items, to 10 or 12 extra bikes, to the Barracuda (aka Chuck Cuda), to the Eclipse (aka Eclipse-Mino, our teal green sports car that we used as a truck on many occasion), to the beloved Northwest, and especially to all of our friends.

With frugality and minimalism pulsing through my veins, I've never liked having extra "stuff" and I can be painstakingly critical of my purchases. (I know that you are laughing out loud after reading that sentence if you know me or any member of my family very well!) So when it came time to downsize from a three bedroom house to live a couple years in a small Boston apartment, I was surprised that I had developed some material attachments. Maybe the twinge of sadness came from knowing how much thought had gone into the purchase of each item I was selling, that it was a reflection of my personal style, or just how much I knew I liked it. But I'm pretty sure that the main source of the pain was that the list of items sold grew so long that it had become a full time job to manage!

"And so it goes" came into my mind with each item that was carted off by it's new owner. We were left feeling free and a little less complicated.

This is where I would have inserted some statistics of how many items I sold, total dollars accrued, and a collage highlighting a handful of favorites; but that file is currently lost on my dead computer. I can assure you that the list was impressively long and that I sold a couple thousand dollars of stuff plus the cars and then the house!

Matt and I know that the most important things in life can always be with us. Our family is still our family, our friends are still our friends, our memories and what we have learned are still in our heads, and we have each other. So here's to cleaning out and living light!

Ice Hater

I officially hate ice.
Matt and I used an entire bag of ice-melt and still our car is stuck.
I walked to three different stores for this bag of ice-melt and we still have to wait for the ice to melt on it's own before we can use our car again.
Who knows when it will actually warm up long enough around here to melt the layers of ice!

zzzz, zzzzz, zzzzz....
That is the sound of The Civ's wheels spinning on the sheets of ice under the wheels.
Yes, we park on a hill.

The Shoveler

I took a few pictures after a big snow fall earlier last month.


In front of our building.


Our car..."The Civ"


Matt...."The Shoveler"

I'm a little tea pot!

I love my birthday tea pot!



Thanks Matt :)

Red Amaryllis

My holiday amaryllis was so beautiful I had to share a few pictures. I probably planted it a couple weeks late as it bloomed about a week after the new year....after my company had left.