Bebe's kids...

I thought I should share the most recent photo of my class.  We did a unit on the pilgrims, which incorporated geography and government, and we ultimately made a quick bulletin board.  I thought it would be nice to take a picture of the kids with it...but apparently they didn't care much.  Just look at those smiling faces.

Tennis masters anyone?

So a few months back there was an amazing Groupon...reduced price tickets to see four former tennis superstars slug it out.  Once Sarah found out that Andre Agassi was going to be one of the four...it was pretty much a done deal, and we had to go.  For those of you who don't know Andre Agassi...I'll take you waaaaay back to his glory days. 

And what he looked like the night we went...

For the life of me, I don't know why he shaved those glorious locks.  Perhaps he could have gone for something more like this...

 You be the judge. 

Also there were Jim Courier, Michael Chang, and Ivan Lendl.  It was actually a lot of fun to go.  The guys didn't take the matches too seriously and they made a lot of jokes.  Most importantly though, Sarah saw the legend in person.  I'll leave you with a parting shot...

A night at the symphony...

At least once a year Sarah and I try to go the Boston Symphony.  This year we went as a part of our Christmas present to each other.  The first symphony was rather strange, a contemporary piece, but it featured one of my favorite singers - Gerald Finley.  Look him up.   I don't have a picture because you're not supposed to take pictures during the performance...and I'm a stickler for most rules.  Here's a picture of us though:)

And here's another!

The second half of the evening was amazing though.  Another person to look up is Jonathon Biss - great pianist.  His fingers flailed about as if they contained no bones. Smiley face.  Afterward, we went to the Cheesecake Factory and had a drink.  All in all it was a great night out.  We hadn't been downtown in quite a while and we had one of those "Wow, we really live in Boston" moments.  They are getting more rare, but it's nice when we actually like where we live. 

The Case of the Enormous Sweet Potato

So...in our farm share this week we received the largest sweet potato we have ever seen. 

This is Dan's hand in a fist. 

Sarah's hand fully extended.

No joke...this sweet potato was over 10 inches long and 12 inches in circumference.  AMAZING!
This is going to make sweet potato fries, mashed sweet potatoes AND whipped sweet potatoes!!!

The leaves are a changin'

This past weekend, we decided to get out of the city for a while.  Unfortunately, you normally have to drive to a different state, or to the other side of this state to get away from the city.  Sarah suggested going to the Arnold Arboretum and it was amazing!  It is a 265 acre arboretum and it did not disappoint us.  

We saw a ton of different trees: oak, pine, spruce and most notably cork trees - but I won't bore you with all of those pictures.  The highlight of our trip was the bonsai exhibit.  Some of the trees were close to 300 years old!  We started thinking more about that and realized that AT LEAST six people would have had to dedicate the better part of their adult lives cultivating this trees.  Imagine what amazing things humans could do if we all worked TOGETHER and with respect for the work the previous generations had put in, toward one goal for hundreds of years "hint hint" Christians out there.  Amazing things only take time and care. 

Here are some of our favorite trees:

Normally, after 300 years, these breeds of trees would be enormous (!) or dead.  The different shaping techniques that we could see up close were amazing.  Anyway...I know this isn't the best post, but I wanted to update something:)

Colorado...for 43 hours

Well, when we first decided to fly to Colorado and back in less than 48 hours, I convinced us both that we would get plenty of sleep.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  When you visit family for only two days, you have to pack in a lot of stuff!  The flight to CO was fine, no bad weather or anything.  I (Dan) watched a movie and a few TV shows, Sarah tried to get some sleep.  We ended up getting to the hotel at 1:30am but, fortunately, we didn't have to be to brunch until 10.  After that...what does my mom do?  Put me to work. 

Changing out the old, leaky water faucet. 

After the work came the fun!  Our new niece...she is absolutely adorable!!!

She was just getting to know us:)

Cute.

That night we played some board games, made dinner (barbeque chicken, butternut squash and corn on the cob),  and went to karaoke.  In bed by 12:30.  The next day, up and at breakfast by 9am.  Back to the hotel to check out by 12pm.  My sisters got a little nostalgic (which is fine) so we drove up to Idaho Springs to visit the gold mine we had worked at with my dad.  That was 14 years ago!  The time has flown by...

This is the Flaherty, Draeger, Caesar, Deal, Jacobson family!

 Sydney is under the pink blanket, because it was only 50 degrees in the mine.  Ginger and Dave are on the far left, Jarel is in the middle, my mom to the right of him, then Sarah and I, and Ivory on the far right.  The boys (left to right) Jacob, Caleb and Kyle, then Dave's daughter Grace.  After the mine we went to a CO pizza standard-Beau Jo's.  We hung around the house the rest of the night before getting back to the airport by 9:30pm.  Our plane was delayed and we ended up arriving around 5/5:30am in Boston.  Thanks Tyson for picking us up!  That's Colorado in 43 hours.

The Bruins Are Back in Town!

An amazing friend got Sarah and I free tickets to a Bruins preseason game.  They played the NY Islanders and won 6-3!  We got some pics of our favorite players - Tim Thomas, Chara and Bergeron.  We drank a couple beers, had a hot dog and, of course, a pretzel!

Unfortunately for me, at one point a family decided to sit in seats that they didn't have tickets for.  A little girl sat behind be who kept kicking the back of my chair (with her mom sitting right next to her) and her slightly older brother would yell "shoot" the instant any Bruin touched the puck. 

All in all - fantastic night.  We hadn't been to a Bruins game in a year and we were pumped to be back in the stands:)

Another school year begins...

As most of you know, my (Dan) last school year was pretty rough.  I was unprepared and had no idea what was about to happen to me.  Well the next year is now underway.  We've only been in school for 2 days, but the kids have already tried to hit/kick me and have destroyed the room a few times.  To my utter surprise I have been able to handle this much better than last year.  I came home from work on Friday and I wasn't crying!  I was able to let a lot roll off my back and Sarah and I went out to celebrate/mourn the end of summer :(

This year I'm starting off with 7 students, 4 first graders and 3 second graders.  I've actually got two girls this year, which is a bit different for me (last year I only had one girl and she didn't start until March!).

This is my class from last year (2010).  They were amazing and really gave me a run for my money!

Sarah and I had a great first summer together.  We went on a few trips with friends, we've participated in two Calvin Alumni gatherings and have had regular visits from some much beloved dogs.  Unfortunately, there aren't any recent pictures of us together:(  Hopefully we'll be ordering some wedding pictures soon and can upload some of those.  

Our newest niece!!

My (Dan) little sister gave birth to her first daughter on July 22nd.  We just got our first clear pictures of her:)  She was born about four weeks premature, so she's kind of small, but soooooo cute!!!

We are so happy for Ivory and Jarel and we can't wait to meet Sydney in October.

Our first farm share

In an effort to support locally grown and fresh food, we have invested in our first farm share.  We signed up with Farmer Dave's, ethically grown (and very reasonably priced) CSA - Community Supported Agriculture.  Our wonderful fruits and veggies come from Dracut, MA - roughly 30 miles from our apartment.  Did you know that grocery store veggies travel and average of 1500 miles to get to your local grocery store?  Anyway....

This is our first share, which we picked up yesterday.  There is watermelon, honeydew melon, peaches, nectarines, apples, corn, tomatoes (3 kinds), zucchini (2 kinds), peppers (3 kinds), eggplant (2 kinds), squash, cranberry beans, green onions, swiss chard, and basil!  Wow!  We made our first meal last night with these veggies - steaks, corn-on-the-cob, and salad.  Who knows what's on the menu tonight!

Ogunquit in August

My good friend Kara came to town for a visit and she took Sarah and I to Ogunquit, Maine.  It was our first time there and we had a blast!  Kara wanted to go there specifically for the beach, which was a lot of fun, but the weather wasn't exactly perfect.  The first day was sunny but the second day was overcast and kind of windy.  We went both days though:)

As the tide went out on the first day Sarah wanted to look for critters in the tide pools...well, she found some.  Here she is trying to grab a crab with her bare hands...

 Which of course she did:)

Then she found a star fish. 

Kara got in on the action and grabbed a crab and starfish too!

Anyone who knows me will believe that I won't touch things from the ocean.  I did take pictures though.

We walked around the town and checked out some shops before getting pizza.  We finished off with a cappuccino and a latte.

Our last night we went out to karaoke and everybody sang!  Even Sarah!  I sang "Papa's in the Pen" by Garth Brooks, Sarah sang "Red High-heels" by Kelly Pickler and Kara sang "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.  We danced and made some friends.   

Awesome night.

A "latte" of love!

So, the first post:)
While I haven't had to work at all in the past six weeks, I've been very busy.  When we got back from our honeymoon, which was amazing, I set out to clean up our apartment.  Sarah went off to work, and I organized the entire apartment, aside from our bedroom...which was a disaster area.

Here are some pictures of the amazing time that we had on our honeymoon.  I'll preface these by saying that we had to do a lot of indoor things because it was either crazy hot and humid or raining.

These are pictures of the outside of the hotel, by day and night.

On the first day, before we got to the hotel, we stopped at two wineries and a dairy farm

 When we got to the hotel we were surprised to find out that we had been upgraded to a deluxe suite, and that we have some of the best friends in the world:)

The evening of Day 1 we went to eat at Harrison's, but we don't have any pictures:(

      Day 2: I was hot, but we played tennis on the resorts clay courts.  Again, we don't have pictures, but it's because we were running around and sweaty.  After tennis it was supposed to be a rainy day, so we drove into Burlington.  Turned out that it wouldn't rain, but it would be ridiculously hot and humid.  So...we spent that entire day indoors.  We checked out Lake Champlain Chocolates (and also the actual Lake Champlain), Magic Hat Brewery, Three Needs Brewery and much more!

Magic Hat Brewery

Lake Champlain and Downtown Burlington

After leaving Burlington we decided to go to Pie Casso - an upscale pizza place in Stowe. 

To finish off the night, we played Pac-Man and pool back at the hotel (Sarah utterly defeated me at pool by the way) :)

Somewhere throughout the afternoon/evening the hotel put out freshly baked cookies!

Day 3: This was supposed to be the best day of our trip, so we took advantage of it.  We got outside as much as we could!  We went hiking, we went down the Alpine Slide (a luge type slide down part of a ski slope), then we hit up Ben & Jerry's and The Alchemist Brewery and Pub. 

I saw these tracks and thought it was a mountain lion.  Sarah was correct and it turned out to be a big hairy dog! 

We are hiking up the utility access trail on a ski slope. 

This was the best view ever!  We almost missed the spot because it isn't marked, but thankfully we found it.  Since we were hiking alone, I had to set the timer for this picture and then run over to sit down next to Sarah in 10 seconds.  Only after seeing the picture did I realize how close we were to the edge :\

Sarah's always finding little friends along the way!

After the hike - we climbed Spruce Peak. 

Ben and Jerry's - need I say more?

If you look closely at the bottom you'll see that the Vermonster contains between 5730-8430 calories.  I tried so hard to get Sarah to order this...but she wouldn't budge.  

By far some of the best brews we tasted on our trip.  The Alchemist was fantastic. 

For dinner, we chose the Trapp Family Lodge.  This is the family that fled Austria during WWII.  They have created an amazing lodge and we ate some great food, Sarah had the wiener schnitzel and I had the bratwurst!

In the event that you can't read the sign it says: "The Trapp Family invites you to share a little of Austria, a lot of Vermont.

To finish off the night, we played a game of mini golf were I (unfortunately or not) dominated Sarah.

This is basically the only mini golf course in the world with sand-traps on most of the fairways.  No windmills and hidden holes here - serious golfers only.   

Day 4: We finished our trip by heading into Stowe and checking out some of the stores.  We had some mediocre coffee :( , saw some amazing sights, and sampled yet more chocolate!

At the cemetery in Stowe we noticed that Noah Robinson (remembered here, and many others) fought in the Revolutionary War.  Mr. Robinson died in 1818 at the incredible age (for the time) of 91.  Yes, he was born in 1727 and served our country.  Each person who fought in the war was marked by a small plaque and American flag.

Sarah was talkin' up the natives at the general store in Stowe. 

Old ski lift. 

Last stop in Stowe, Laughing Moon Chocolates (we recommend their dark chocolate and caramel rolls)!

We had an amazing time on our honeymoon and have been so happy to finally start our life together.  Sarah is back at work and my time off is winding down.  We've been spending a lot of time with friends and have been working to make our apartment adult-like (we're getting there)!