Perks of Living in a City

 Wine tasting is SO last year. What's new: olive oil and vinegar tasting! There's this great specialty store on Newbury St. in Boston that only sells the finest olive oil and vinegar called Boston Olive Oil Company. Debbie and I went on a sister date one afternoon recently and had fun tasting flavors like "pomegranate fig vinegar" or "Tuscan herb olive oil". The employees told us certain vinegars are excellent on vanilla ice cream... go figure! Here are some photos from our recent trip. Happy Monday!

Debbie (on the right) tasting some vinegar.

Such amazing flavors!

Oils

Vinegars

Oh how I love Newbury St.

My favorite.

Love their image!

Store front. Every so often, Boston stuns me with her beauty :)

Autumn is my Favorite

I love images. I love moving images. Words are beautiful and I enjoy being able to put feelings and sites into words. But there's nothing like the real thing; a thousand words to one picture. You know what is better than images, though? The absolute real thing. Being there. In the moment. Taking it in. Living it. Experiencing it. Not thinking about something else when you are there. Taking a deep breath and appreciating where you are and who you are with.

For the Columbus Day weekend I went on a ten mile hike with my friend Jess up on Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire. You can't bottle the colors we saw. Even the pictures can't explain what we witnessed. But here are some. For your enjoyment. Especially if you are not in New England this fall season to enjoy what has to be one of the most beautiful things God has created - autumn.

Jess, me and Charlie the toy poodle - ready to go! Yes, he made it all the way up the mountain... with a little help.

On our way up. Not even halfway yet.

Charlie saying, "Hey! Catch up already!"

The view gets better and better.

Jess striking a pose.

Pit stop about a half hour from the summit. GOD. Look at those mountains and clouds.

Taking it all in.

View from our lunch spot about 10 minutes from the top. We kept saying it looked so Sound of Music haha!

Charlie taking it all in. That's 93 looping its way through the valley.

So refreshing and reinvigorating. The perspective on life from up here is inspiring.

On our way down, overlooking the lake we were about to walk around.

Another shot of the lake. Look at that reflection! It was a perfect day.

Tromping through some woods. I wish I had taken more pictures of just our walk through the colors.

Boardwalk around the lake.

Charlie got super muddy at this point. Ah well.

View of the mountains from the lake.

Mountains are so majestic.

Little prints.

View from the parking lot. We made it!

Charlie was so tired that he fell asleep within 5 minutes.

Move, Learn and Eat

So summer came and went. How about that? That was fast. It always is. Especially up here in Boston. As you can tell from my extreme lack of posts, I've been busy. I ran a golf tournament. I quit my job. I went to Florida. My house had our annual house-weekend away. And I'm now just catching up with life. My body is telling me to slow down a bit because I woke up sick this morning. Good thing for unemployment! I can just sit here and relax and not worry about being anywhere. My day consists of watching Netflix, reading and eating the pounds of leftovers from my parents visit. My mom was up the past two days and we spent the entire two days together. It was awesome and I got a whole new autumn wardrobe. Score huge. My dad joined us for dinner on Tuesday night before his meetings in Boston on Wednesday. When I come back again I will have stories of my many adventures with plenty of photos. For now, I leave you with these little treasures to encourage you to get out and TRAVEL!

 

Portland, ME

Another photo blog today! I went up to Maine a few weeks ago to see my cousin Kevin, his wife Debbie and their three kids. They moved from Portland to Raleigh, NC last year. I used to be able to travel the hour and a half to visit them easily - but now they are an airplane ride away. They came up to Maine to visit Debbie's side of the family first (LI came next for Kev's and my side of the family) and since Maine is closer for me I chose to visit them there. We spent almost the entire Saturday on Sebago Lake tubing, swimming, sunning and enjoying food and company. It was beautiful. I miss them already.

Sweet Lily on the way to the lake.

Maddy and Zach! My kiddos <3

Lily and a friend playing in the shallow water

"Zach, are you ready to go tubing?" I got two thumbs up!

Maddy and her cousin

"See you later! Have fun!"

Lily and I watching the boat pull away.

We love the sunshine!

They were in the water. all. day.

Lily. So cute! Yet such a trouble maker ;-)

Girls just getting back from tubing.

Maddy and me

Silly photos... and go: #1

#2

#3

#4

Smiles!

Sebago Lake

The house

Hammock time. It was such a relaxing day.

Ragged Mountain

A couple of Saturdays ago, I met my cousins halfway between Boston and New Paltz, NY. We ended up in Berlin, CT. A town not too far from my hometown, but I had never known there was a Berlin in Connecticut. Go figure. We met for breakfast at The Pepper Pot in Southington which was quite adorable. If you ever make it out to the Southington/Berlin area, I highly recommend the diner. It was large enough for bigger parties, but small-town-esque with the friendliest waitresses. After a filling breakfast, we headed to Ragged Mountain for our 6-mile hike. Except it turned into a 10+ mile hike. We're not exactly sure how much we actually walked since we got lost. Bad. We ended up out of the preserve and had to walk around a reservoir. Thank God it was warm enough to take a little break and go swimming! But getting around the reservoir wasn't the easiest task... the brush got so bad we couldn't pass. So we ended up on private property walking through their apple orchard and reached the street on the other end of the farm. We walked the road until we found a path back into the preserve. We thought we had missed the trail that lead to the peak of the "mountain" (I put that in quotes because in CT there aren't really mountains, just really large hills that disguise as tough terrain every once in awhile). But, we found it! We made it to the top. And it was so worth it.

More of a photo blog today - so enjoy!

We felt like we were on LOST. There were turned over cars in the middle of the trails, no road in sight. It was extremely puzzling. But seriously, how did they get there?

Gina and Laura... before getting lost :)

So many bugs! Swatting them away all... day... long... Good lord.

Calm part of the trail. Little did we know what was just ahead.

The climb! (Please no Miley references)

Thank God we stumbled across the apple orchard eventually. We had walked completely out of the preserve and we didn't know how long it would take us to get back to our car. We were hungry! And the apples were just ripe enough 0:)

The orchard

FINALLY made it. The detour took too long in my humble opinion. But oh! was it worth it. This shot was to my left.

To the center...

A little to the right... (yes, that's the reservoir we walked around)

All the way right.

Photo opp.

You can tell I'm tired, but happy!

The ropes by our feet are rock climbers... yikes!

Up close.

Can you see us?

We did it!

So tired by the end... we had to take a little nap :)

Ragged Mountain

Near where we parked our cars there were 30 pairs of shoes hanging on the electrical lines. We're not sure why. But Gina wanted to join in on the fun without losing her shoes forever. This was her compromise. Ha!

Seriously, what is up with Ragged Mt? Cars in the woods, shoes in the sky?

The end. Another adventure to be posted tomorrow!