Finally!

Well, well, well. Looks like it's been nine months since my last post. Now the question is, do I catch up on the last 9 months, or just dive into the present?  Hmmm.....Perhaps a semi-quick 9-month recap followed by what we're up to now. Sound good? Great.

Since my last post we have taken two trips to NYC. Our first one was in October. The evening before we left, I had a miscarriage, so our trip was a somewhat subdued affair. Mark also got strep throat while we were down there, so it was kind of a downer. However, we did make it to Central Park and the Museum of Natural History, ate various ethnic foods and got to see our friends Katie, Alex and Eric as well as Adam and Emily who came up from DC for the night.

Central Park

Hall of Life at the museum

 November brought Mark back to seed packing at High Mowing Seeds while I continued on at the Co-op. In early November we helped our friend Dan make sausage from the 4 pigs he raised all summer. Here are a few choice shots.

Last year I peaced out after 10 minutes. This year I got right into the thick of it.

Pig heart

Maggie loves sausage parties.

Mark, Emma and Coco making it happen.

Thanksgiving week brought a visit from not 1, not 2  but 3 friends! Nic and Sarah flew in from Bozeman, MT and Katie bussed up from the big city for a week of fun, friends and eating. We managed to fit sausage into at least one meal a day. Yum!  We ended up eating three Thanksgiving dinners over the course of the week: Community Dinner is every single Thursday, including Thanksgiving, so that was dinner number one. Dinner number 2 came on Friday when we hosted Friendsgiving and then Claire and Drew hosted another Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. Mmmm...

Sarah, Mark and Nic at Community Dinner Thanksgiving

Squishy face friends photo at Friendsgiving

At Friendsgiving there was discussion over whether you could swallow food upside down. Dan proved that you can.

Catan anyone?

Something else we did during Thanksgiving Fun Week (besides eat) was get way into Settlers of Catan. Way. At least one game was played a day. Or three.

On December 1st, I turned 29. I also started working for Caledonia Spirits and Winery  sampling out wine and spirits at liquor stores and markets around the state. It's a pretty sweet gig, which continues this summer. I get to go to Hardwick and Burlington Farmer's Markets and give people free samples of tasty booze.  Their gin is the best I've ever tasted and I'm not just saying that because I work there.  For my birthday we went to Nutty Steph's for chocolate and bacon Thursdays. Chocolate and bacon were both consumed in vast quantities. Mmmm....29 never tasted so good.

Maggie tries to pretend she doesn't love Hank, but she does.

 December brought a 10 day trip to Montana for the holidays. It was great to be back in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley, especially at such a fun filled time of year. Activities included a winter hike at Lake Como with the Goheen women, beer drinking at Jasper Miller's new brewery Higher Ground Brewing, hanging out at Chapter One, eating, hanging out with friends, more eating. As an added bonus, Nic and Sarah came for Christmas and got to participate in our annual Christmas Eve ravioli making and eating extravaganza! It was so nice to see them for not one, but two food centered holidays! When I'm out East I can forget how much I love the West, but being back quickly makes me remember. If only I could clone myself and live in multiple places I love at once. Maybe someday...

The lovely Lake Como

The lovely Goheen women: Morgan, Alysha and Sylvie

So many raviolis!

Family time! Peggy, Chels, Warren and Grandma Lois

Montana's version of shuffleboard. How close can you get your rock to the edge of the ice without sailing it into the river?

Uh oh. More Catan. This time with an ocean involved.

Dusty, Ives and me at Higher Ground.

Montana was awesome and it was sad to leave. But all good things must come to an end. And usually they lead to more good things. Like an awesome dress-up Formal/Feral New Year's Eve party in Vermont.  Dancing and mild debauchery occurred. What a way to ring in 2012.

Nothing says Happy New Year like pink sequins.

Welcome to 2012!

Winter in VT was pretty mellow. I did not try cross-country skiing again and I don't feel a bit bad about it.  I felt a little guilty while winter was happening, but looking back at it from a summer perspective, I don’t feel guilty at all.  Some people are made for outdoor winter sports and some are not. Instead I caught up on my reading, crafting and movie watching.

February brought another miscarriage at 6 ½ weeks, same as the first one. It threw us both into a bit of despair, but we haven’t given up hope.

Since July of 2011 we’ve been hosting Taco Tuesday at our house the last Tuesday of every month. Mark and I supply the hand-pressed corn tortillas and everyone else brings things to put on, in or next to a taco. In January we ran out of propane the day before taco night so we cooked all our tortillas on our woodstove. It was a good thing it was a cold night, cause it got real hot.  In February our theme was Taco Tattuesday and a friend of a friend came to give people tattoos. Mark, Emma and Coco all got tattoos.  Here is photo evidence.

Mark getting a manatee dreaming about a taco

Emma getting a candleholder

Coco getting a double handled saw

In March, Hank got a nasty cut on his ear and we ended up having to put a makeshift cone on his head so he would stop messing with it. He was really upset about the whole thing, but it provided hours of entertainment for Mark and me. For some reason, Hank didn’t think he could lift his head when the cone was on, so he spent 3 days slinking around the house, cone brushing against the floor, pitifully meowing. Luckily, he healed up just fine and has only had to wear the cone once since, for an unrelated, but equally gross injury.

Poor Hank.

Late March brought some unseasonably warm weather which was welcomed, but with skepticism. For a week people ran around in shorts and t-shirts, started seedlings and considered going swimming. After the week of warmth, it dropped back below freezing, but it was a nice reminder that summer is definitely coming!

Mmmmm...meat.

 In April we took a trip to NYC and Washington DC to visit friends. It was so nice to be in places where leaves were on trees and flowers were blooming. In DC we made much use of the city bike program. You swipe your credit card and can rent a bike for 3 days for $15. If you’re on it for under half an hour its free, so we spent our time in DC biking around in ½ hour spurts, taking in the sights and soaking up the 70 degree weather.  We also went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. There was an amazing exhibit of x-rayed fish skeletons.

Mark at the Capitol

Winter? Not in DC.

Me in front of the Supreme Court. This one's for you, Ma.

Mark and Adam holding up the White House

Fish Skeleton!

3 fish skeletons! Piranhas?

I want to ride my bicycle!

Cherry blossoms peaked early this year. Good for us, not as good for the cherry blossom festival.

While we were in NYC, Mark turned 30! Pretty grown up. We spent the day doing New York things, like riding the Staten Island Ferry, drinking beers at McSeourley’s Irish pub (the oldest Irish Pub in NYC), and eating lots of NY style pizza.  

Lady Liberty

This is what 30 looks like.

Katie and friends at McSeourley's

On April 14^th we had an amazing scavenger hunt birthday party for Mark.  It was similar to our previous summer’s scavenger hunt, but at this one the wild card was planking instead of taking off your pants, which means I can show some photos!

Maggie was really excited about Mark's birthday scavenger hunt.

Peeps in dryers.

Jim planking a beaver dam.

Vacuum someone's hair.

Two planks and a yoga pose.

Human Pyramid with strangers.

High-fiving strangers in an eating establishment. These people were stoked to be in the scavenger hunt.

Merry go round? How about merry go plank.

Not only do we still have payphones in Vermont, but you can plank them.

Pineapple upside down birthday cake.

In April we also helped our friends Lindsay and Jonah inoculate hundreds of logs with shiitake mushrooms. Pretty fun way to spend a Saturday!

 April 30^th brought my Dad’s 62^nd birthday and the birth of our friends Liza and David’s baby, Johannah Skye Sprout y McKay. She is adorable and I’m so glad she’s part of our Vermont community.  A few weeks before her birth, we had a ‘blessing way’ for Liza. I had never heard of a blessing way before coming to Vermont. It’s a lovely gathering of women (and sometimes men) where we all celebrate the mother and the transition into motherhood. Lots of singing was involved and also telling Liza how much we love her. I broke down a bit during that part. If my first pregnancy had come to term, I would have had a baby 6 weeks after Liza, so I was busy feeling a lot of feelings during her blessing way.  However, even though there have been bouts of sadness, it’s been really fun watching baby Johannah get bigger and bigger and more responsive as the days go by.

Johannah in Mark's arms, a few days after she was born.

 May 1^st brought a surprise. When we woke up in the morning, our car was gone! It had been stolen from right out of our driveway while we were sleeping. To be fair, the keys were in the car, but they were hidden under the seat, so it was quite a shock that someone actually bothered to look for them.  Especially since we drive a 1995 Subaru station wagon. We assumed that it was gone for good, but 2 weeks later the cops found it in a parking lot in Johnson, a mere 30 minutes away. And it still worked! Meanwhile, a friend of a friend gave us a free, 1995 Subaru station wagon, so now we are the proud owners of not 1, but 2 1995 station wagons, one green, one blue, both mostly functional.

Also in May I started working at the Galaxy Bookshop, our local independent bookstore. Linda Ramsdall, the owner, is good friends with Russ Lawrence, the former owner of Chapter One Bookstore.  It’s so great being back in a bookstore, reading books, talking about books, thinking about books…really it’s the perfect job for me. I only work Thursdays from 3-7, but just doing that is wonderful.  Linda and Sandy are great and it’s lots of fun.

May also brought the launch of our Farmer’s Market Taco stand, ‘Tacos Con Gusto.’  Mark and Matt had one gig last year, at a funny music festival, but this year they have hit the ground running. We have a space at the Montpelier Farmer’s Market the third Saturday of every month and we’re fill ins at the Waitsfield Market, but so far we have been peddling tacos every weekend. It’s been really fun watching Mark in a “kitchen” setting and I always love serving people tasty food. It’s a lot of work, but totally worth it. And we’re even making a little bit of money! 

Our first day of Tacos Con Gusto at the Montpelier Farmer's Market

Peggy and Warren came for a visit in late May/early June. We didn’t get up to much, but it was so nice having them here. Since they were here on the last Tuesday of the month, they got to attend Taco Tuesday 10. It turned out to be our biggest Taco Tuesday ever with 52 people attending! Our biggest one before that was 32 people. They were also here for Hardwick’s Memorial Day events, including a parade and sustainability fair. We ate lots of good food, home cooked and restaurant. We also went canoeing at Caspian Lake, attended a Memorial Day BBQ at Merin and Beth’s, spent time in Montpelier and did a little gardening.  Their trip was too short, but it was great to have them here. I feel lucky to have such awesome parents.

Family

Canoeing at Lake Caspian

 June has been busy. Between the co-op, tacos, Caledonia Spirits and the Galaxy, as well as all the fun things that happen in the summer in VT, we’ve been pretty busy. Mark started back at Harvest Hill after our 2^nd New York trip and he’s been loving it. This year’s interns are doing a great job and Mark always thrives when he gets to work outdoors. Maggie also loves summer, because it means she gets to go back to the farm too. One of the interns, Carey, has a young dog named Lokie and when Maggie isn’t napping under the Subaru, she’s busy chasing Lokie or biting his neck. She comes home and immediately crashes on the couch. Pretty cute.

Future adventures include a trip to Boston this weekend to see our favorite podcasters Seth Romatelli and Jonathen Laroquette of Uhh YeahDude live at the Paradise Rock Club. We’re real excited.  In August our dear friends Nic and Sarah are tying the knot in Elkton, Oregon on August 18^th. Mark is the best man and we’re using their wedding as an excuse to make a 12 day trip out to Oregon. August 11^th is our 5^th wedding anniversary and we’ll be in Portland, OR to celebrate. I can’t wait to head to Oregon to see our adorable friends get married, as well as the awesome friend reunion that will go down at their wedding. We’ll also get to see my folks at the wedding and then spend some time with them on the Oregon Coast before heading back to VT.

Another potential adventure? Home ownership.  We’ll keep ya’ll updated.

Love to everyone. And enjoy the summer!