Obligatory Photo

I'm so lucky to be a teacher and have the summer off, it would have been really hard to leave my sweet Emmett this week so thankfully I have 2 more months of morning snuggles and little coos.

On A Roll

Has anyone else noticed the Spring Roll trend in appetizers?  There have been so many varieties that are all so yummy!  Ben and I often just "app it up" at restaurants rather then get two big meals. 

Here are a few I've had lately that were really good;

1) Tex Mex Eggrolls at the Cheesecake Factory.  Corn, black beans, cheese.  What could be better?

2) Mashed Potato and Scallion Eggrolls at McKibbin's Irish Pub.  Granted, these are from my trip to Montreal but if you're ever up there check them out!

3) Philly Steak and Cheese Spring Rolls at Tempo. Nicole and I met in Waltham one night for dinner. Tempo's menu is a little pricey but we also "apped it up" with their 7 before 7 menu! 

Now I'm in the mood to eat all three! 

Montreal, Oui Oui

Ben and I had a great trip to Montreal this week.  I've always wanted to go and haven't heard one person say a bad thing about the city.  We spent our days bike riding and sight seeing and our evenings ditching passing rainstorms by checking out the local eats.

Recently, Boston activiated its bike sharing Hubway program.   Little did i know, this program was inspired by Montreal!  The city is extremely biker friendly with actual lanes for bikers:

I really enjoyed seeing the sights via bike!  I kept meaning to take a picture of one of us riding but... that didn't happen!

Old Port is beautiful to walk around and explore.  Andy recommended Notre-Dame Basillica and it was certainly worth the visit.

Another highlight was jazz at Upstairs (which is actually downstairs...)  We enjoyed a pitcher of drinks and french-style desserts.

  The band was a Cuban-style band that remixed pop songs as well as classics like Fur Elise:

On the way out I wanted to try a Montreal-style bagel at the famous Fairmount Bagel. They're skinnier than New York bagels but was certainly tasty.  I thought it would be more of a cafe but ended up being a bakery, filled to the brim with bagels as they were getting ready to send them out to delivery across the Province. 

It certainly was a Bon Voyage!

Check out the rest of my pictures from the trip here!!

SUPER Strawberries

Remember when my mother inspired me to do something similar to these in 2007?  I guess this person had a sturdier hand (or as Nicole pointed out, we don't see the 400 they messed up and tossed aside!)

The "Book"

Last week I attended a technology workshop for work.  The keynotes and workshops all dealt with how to purposefully use technology in the classroom and how to keep up in the ever changing tech-world.  One of my co-workers, Jo-Ellen, saw the following video in a workshop.  It shows a person dealing with "the book" as new technology after the scroll.  It's pretty funny.

More Wedding Fun

I can't imagine how Molly and Chrissy feel because I'm disappointed all the wedding fun is over with!  What I'm going to miss the most is the opportunity to see people: I have spent so much time during the last few months catching up with people I haven't seen in years.  This morning Ben and I got an invite to both California and DC, hopefully I'll be able to plan trips and see people sooner than later. 

 Onto the wedding!  Molly of course was a beautiful bride! 

 I had fun with her niece Tierney, we became buds.

The reception was at the beautiful Hall of Springs in Saratoga, NY.

It was fun to see and catch up with a lot of people from the 'ol neighborhood.  I introduced Ben to " the parents of my senior prom date."  They got a kick out of that.

Besides having me in their corner, Molly and Chrissy have a lot in common.  They're both teachers, value the importance of religion in their life and are insanely organized!  But who would have known as they both prepared for their weddings with dance lessons that they would both dance to Michael Buble's How Sweet It is!  I almost fell over when Molly and Anthony started to dance!

Chrissy jokingly asked whose dance was better, so I suggested a dance off to decide :)  Hey, maybe I can keep this wedding fun going!

See the rest of the good times here.

Summer Lovin'

Ahh summer, how I love thee. (pictures from Joe)

 

 And this about sums up my lazy mornings.  

The Help

I recently read The Help and am looking forward to seeing the movie:



I know movies often disappoint against the book, so hopefully this will be a good one!

 But... the book constantly talks about how unruly Skeeter, the main characters, hair is.  Just look at Emma Stones' curls!  I wish my hair looked that good everyday!  Hopefully the rest of the movie is more true to the story.

Cats!

This photo reminded me of our old cat George.  He use to sit on the sky lights above our great room and this is all you'd see at night. 

And this photo was just cute!

Don't worry, I haven't gone all Cat Lady on you!

I debated posting about the wedding again!  But I thought the rehearsal dinner photos were really beautiful! (Thanks Jen!)

Pete's parents had the dinner at The Daily Catch down on the water front.  For any of you who have been to the Barking Crab, it's near there hidden under the federal building. 

As the sun set it provided a great backdrop for photos.

A Feeney sandwich!

 The owner, Marie, was very friendly and active at the party.  Chrissy's friend Amanda has a Gluten allergy.  Marie took her into the kitchen to show her how the meal was prepared so Amanda could feel rest assured about her meal.  Marie also wanted to set Amanda up with her son: one of her seven children! Needless to say, Amanda was her buddy for the night!

And a few last photos of the beautiful couple:

 

Next week stay tuned for photos from Molly's wedding too!  

Tonights the Night

Chris and Pete's wedding was like a good date.  I can't stop thinking about it and when I do, I get that happy feeling inside!!

I thought the DJ did a great job keeping us all out on the dance floor.  I love Will's face in this picture...

and think this really capture the moment:

 

I was really trying to get Chris to do her mean air guitar at this point, no luck although Huey Lewis and the News was playing just down the street! (personal Road Trip joke) 

I've been playing this song on repeat all week, and have upgraded from Clapping to Fist Pumping:

Currently Confused

Lately I been feeling frumpy with clothing and not feeling current.  (And finding a deep laugh line in my face while the make-up artist did my make-up last weekend didn't help!)

So once in awhile I check out Urban Outfitters to see what's really current.  And this is what I found:

Seriously?  I know the whole floral thing is in style right now but these pants are awful.  This floral jumper trend makes me think of 8th grade.  My mom has a picture in our house of me and my sister from a European vacation we took in 1994.  My sister likes the picture, but I always poke fun at it because I have curly bangs, braces and a floral jumper on.

Which got me to thinking: really I'm not outdated, I'm just so cutting edge I'm into trends 15 years before they're really in.

Chris and Pete's Wedding!

Even though most of the readers of this blog were AT Chrissy and Pete's wedding, I think this week will entail a few posts about the wedding as photos flood in!  The following photos are from Amanda who shadowed the photographer Jamie.

Chrissy, of course was a beautiful bride!!

I have to say she was pretty calm the whole day!  All her hard work paid off as everything came together.  The ceremony was beautiful and was followed by pictures at Post Office Square. 

 The reception was insanely fun!  Not only was the PC crew there but my family which led to a ton of dancing.

 Ironically, Ben realized he went to URI with one of the groomsmen and they had common friends.  Small world! 

 I will post more pics as I get them!

Road Rage

If you love Cash Cab and Ben Baily as much as I do, you should watch his special: Road Rage.  I caught the end of this stand up special the other night and definitely laughed out loud.  If you can, you should try and catch the whole special.

Little B

We all come to an age when our mothers' start to clean out our bedrooms and ask us to take it or chuck it!  As Ben's mom did this (sort of) recently, he came across a wooden B his Dad made for him when he was a kid.  We joked about hanging it in our apartment but I had another B in mind....

So I replaced the missing dowels and patched up the crack...

sanded, painted...

added a few bees and...

Voila!  The B has a whole new life! 

 

I'm looking forward to giving it to Bernadette when the family comes into town for Feeney's wedding!

Dear Photograph

I love looking at old photographs.  Recently Ben's mother shared some photos and I couldn't resist posting Ben's high school football picture! 

 He looks the same just with more hair ha!

In the same vein, I have been following this new blog called Dear Photograph.  Here are two images to give you an idea of what can be found there:

The blog includes little notes to the photograph and is really sweetly done.  I want to find some photos of my own and try this out!

Baby you're a Firework

Sunday night Ben and I went to a BBQ at his friend's house in Stoughton. 

Stoughton is home of the Boston area IKEA and they were sponsoring the local fire works show.  This provided a host of jokes such as "Will the fire works only be yellow and blue?" and "Will they form pictures of armoires and funky tables?"

While we were down waiting for the show to start, there was a delay.  I said, "Do you think they're having trouble with the directions?"

chirp, chirp. No one laughed.

Get it?  IKEA directions are hard to follow?  Maybe they couldn't follow the directions to get the show started?  Yea... only Ben got it and that's why I keep him around. 

Hug O' War

As some of you may know, my school is going to be knocked down and rebuilt over the next two years.  During those two years K-2 will be housed at one school, 3-4 at another and 5 at a third.  This has been a challenging process for students, parents as well as the staff.

Our school is a really special place.  There is a great sense of comradery, collaboration and for a staff of 20+ woman there is no back stabbing or drama! 

Yesterday was the last day of school and I have to say I cried a little in the morning.  I have been so absorbed with the challenges of my own class that I haven't been able to absorb some of the sadness of closing our building.  Yes, we will be coming back to a brand new state of the art building and yes, I won't have a leaky roof during the winter snow but our building was still special! 

As part of the good bye a fifth grader came up with the idea to give Thompson one last hug.  Everyone gathered outside for a really special moment.

Good bye Ol' School!

Quoable

I saw this magnet at a store and almost bought it for the fridge.