Happy New Year

Happy New Year! All joking aside, 2010 was a wonderful year and 2011 is looking just as bright! : )

Christmas Love

{Yes, that is a blanket moonlighting as a tree skirt, shh!}

My favorite part of Christmas has to be this: decorating the tree and finding the perfect spot for each little ornament. Second to that, it is sitting around the tree, wrapping presents with Christmas oldies playing in the background and a cup of old faithful, Starbucks.

Ornaments scattered about, between the cat and Sam, I think we only broke one. Not bad.

Garrett wrapped Sam in lights, which he loved.

The theme of the tree is "the 12 days of Christmas"

And presents wrapped for the people we love.

True.

A Wicked Good Time in Salem

Oh Salem. Salem is a town that has been on my mind since I was an elementary schooler learning about Sarah Good and the many others that were accused of witchcraft in the late 1600s. My interest in the witchcraft trials never left me, so it was only natural that I visit the town where it all happened. Actually, it is not just the witchy part that I find interesting, being in a town that is one of the oldest in America has its draw too {I'm morbid and I love history, I get cooler by the minute}.

Anyhoo, on our second day in Boston we took a ferry to Salem. We got there mid-afternoonish and hit the ground running.

This is us fresh off the ferry. We stopped in front of a house that we walked by. I loved the way it was decorated, it was everything that I love about Fall.

We walked and walked and walked around Salem. We saw all of the must-see sites, like the House of Seven Gables and the Hawthorne Hotel. We visited the week before Halloween, so Salem was brimming with activity. There was a huge Halloween festival with vendors, food and costumed tourists lining the tiny streets. There were tons of witchy shops with all of the gadgets that one might need to be a witch. They were all packed, it was elbow to elbow in most of them. I don't take that kind of stuff seriously, nor do I desire to be involved in it, but since we were in Salem...we had our palms read. Do you know how hard it was to find a stinkin' palm reader? Most of them were booked thru the next day, but we ended up finding a husband/wife palm reading team and made an appointment with them. It was a fun, once in a lifetime activity.

Our final activity was a nighttime walking tour of the town. We met with our group and toured all of the historical sites, not only of the witch trials, but of other town mysteries as well. We really, really liked this. Our tour guide was really passionate about the town and very knowledgeable about its history.

Believe it or not, Salem was one of the most significant early American seaports.

Nathaniel Hawthorne statue.

Me with some very, umm, spirited visitors.

A very Halloween-y restaurant.

Garrett in one of the many shops I dragged him into.

Ferris wheel at the midway.

Pretty shot of Salem at night.

One of the stops on our walking tour. Also used in the movie Hocus Pocus.

Well that concludes my blogging about the trip we took in OCTOBER. I don't know why, but I just could not move forward in my blogging until I got that out of the way. I just need things to go in chronological order. Maybe so I can look back one day and not forget any of the fun times I had. Hopefully I will start blogging in real time now.

I Left My Heart in Boston

It's been roughly a month since we returned home from Boston, and I can't seem to get the charming old city off of my mind. Garrett feels the same way, we both agree that if we had jobs lined up there we would move in a heartbeat. During our four day stay we soaked up everything we could and I still don't feel like I got enough Boston! Let me bullet point some of my favorite things about our trip/the city:

• The history. Boston was founded in 1630, and is one of the oldest cities in America. I really felt like I was going back in time during parts of our trip. If you have any interest at all in US history, you will not be disappointed.
• The architecture. I guess this ties into the history part. All of the homes and buildings were so interesting to look at. I was such a peeping tom- I tried to look in all of windows that were lit when we walked by.
• The public transportation. We never had to rent a car. We were able to get most everywhere by taking the Subway or train.
• Dog friendly. Seriously, people took their dogs everywhere. Even our hotel manager brought her dog with her. This really won over the dog lover in me.
• The food! Hello seafood is all I need to say.

And now some of my favorites in pictures:

Our hotel, the Chandler Inn, from the outside.


The stairwell inside our hotel.

Some good eatin' in the North End.

Me in front of a cute little stoop.

Garrett chowing down on the boardwalk.

The city from our ferry.

Row-houses.

The company. Garrett is the best traveling partner {best partner for anything really} I could have hoped for.

Here is a link to our Flickr if you are interested in the hundreds more that I took.

Salem is next, that haunted little town gets a post all of its own!

East Coast Love

As I type this I am lying in a hotel bed in Boston with Garrett sleeping quietly next to me. I want to pinch myself. I should be tired, but I have never been able to sleep when I am on vacation. We decided to go to Boston because neither of us have been to the East Coast and both have always wanted to, especially in the Fall. I had a plane ticket that was given to me as a gift by my step-dad that I needed to use, so here we are.

We flew in yesterday and I fell in love with the East Coast before we even landed. As we were nearing Boston, I could see several lighthouses littering the ocean, tons of red, orange and gold trees, and my favorite; Cape Cod style houses. We took the T {their bus service}to the Subway {another first for both of us!} then Taxi'd to our hotel.

We are staying in the historic South End at the Chandler Inn. I love our hotel, it's a converted row-house, so it is tiny but charming. There is a bar attached to our hotel that we stopped in before dinner last night. We were there briefly, but long enough for Garrett to notice that there were no other girls present. Hmm. I looked up the bar, turns out it is a gay sports bar, and we are kind of staying in the gayborhood! I love it!

We had dinner in the North End, or Little Italy at a delish restaurant named Saraceno's. We could barely understand our heavily accented waiter, but we ended up with the most wonderful food! We strolled the North End for a bit longer, then went back to Fritz, the bar by our hotel. We watched the end of the Rangers game and boo'ed the Yankees along with the rest of the crowd.

We have so much more to pack in before we leave Monday and I am enjoying every minute of it! And of course, there is no one else I would rather be here with.

Hi from Boston!

When Garrett Met Sammy

As Garrett and I began spending more and more time together, I knew that him meeting Sam was inevitable. As much as I knew that Garrett would be wonderful with Sam, and as much as he wanted to meet Sam, I was still really apprehensive. Too many child development classes I guess. I even told Garrett once that it might even be a year before I was ready for them to meet. Well that obviously did not happen. Things have moved quickly with Garrett and I in every sense of the word, including him meeting Sam.

Garrett wanted it to be fun when they met, so he came over and we all went to the park then had dinner. Let's just say that it did not go as we both hoped. Actually, I did not think it went badly but I knew Sam a lot better than Garrett did at that point, so I did not think he behaved that out of the ordinary. Garrett on the other hand had higher hopes, Sam was pretty stand-offish. Sam in general is not a very touchy, love-y kiddo, and it takes him a while to warm up to strangers, especially men. By the end of the evening I was left unsure of whether this would go any further.

The next day I went to work still worried, but my fears were calmed when I got a delivery of the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen, with the most thoughtful card sticking through the stems. It said:

That was on June 23rd. Since then Sam and Garrett have gotten to know each other very well, and now they are best buddies. It makes my heart so happy to see them together. And while I am aware that Sam has a father that is very much a part of his life, I am so, so thankful that he has Garrett too.

Here they are playing super heroes.

During a zoo trip.