May & June

I am happy to report that, despite my doubts, it did, in fact get warm. It was probably about May 15 before it felt like winter was over, but now we are enjoying a glorious summer.

I feel like the New England summer is like the Clemson fall--so much packed in week after week because it's the nicest time of year. We suffer through six months of slow, cold winter and then everything bursts forth into life for four short months of warmth (and two chilly months of autumn). So we spend every minute possible soaking up the sun, trying to save it up for those snowy, dark days when we think the sun will never shed its warmth on us again. So we've stayed outside and busy!

May
- On May 1, we officially joined Evangelical Baptist Church. We are so thankful for the friends we've made there.

- On May 13, I turned 29. We celebrated by taking a weekend vacation to New Hampshire and Vermont. We stayed in White River Junction, NH. We hiked in Marsh-Billings-Rockerfeller National Park and in Queechee Gorge. It was so nice to get out of the city for a while and enjoy some peace and quiet out in nature. The Saturday was a beautiful day, perfect for hiking and enjoying being outside. We hiked probably about nine miles. We were glad we pushed it to get in both hikes, though, because Sunday it was freezing cold and pouring rain.

- We bought bikes! I had been wanting a bike for a long time so that I could run errands and ride to work sometime. Patrick and I rode our bikes to work for the first time on May 11 to participate in Bay State Bike Week. It was 46 degrees out with 13mph wind. I couldn't feel my fingers by the time I got to work. Since then I've been biking to work a few times a week. It's nice because then my commute time doubles as my work time, so I can get some extra sleep :)

- Patrick's parents came to visit the following weekend. We rode the Minuteman bike trail with them and otherwise just enjoyed spending time with them. Pam cooked us a delicious dinner from produce she got at the Haymarket on the Friday night. Thursday we went out to a Moldovan restaurant down the street, and Saturday we went to Legal Sea Foods for supper. They had to fly out early Saturday morning.

- We had a busy Memorial Day weekend! Our friends Mark and Kimberly had some family come in town who stayed with us. We got to meet them (Mark's dad, stepmom, and siblings) and celebrated little Timothy's fourth birthday. On Sunday and Monday we had a church retreat in Alton Bay, NH. It was such a nice time getting to know folks better and enjoying being outside.
We stayed in a cabin with our friends Nick and Michelle and their two girls, and our friend Anna and her parents. We stayed up until 1AM telling stories and laughing together. They called for rain all day Monday but sure enough it cleared out around 10AM and we enjoyed volleyball and kayaking together.

- We said our first goodbyes to friends we'd made here. Our dear friends Kathryn and Khang moved to Seattle for their residency. What a blessing our brothers and sisters at Park Street Church are.

June
- We planted a tiny garden in the tiny bit of mulch we have in our front yard. We've planted two tomato plants, a few okra plants, snap peas, snow peas, pole beans, lettuce, and herbs. So far we've harvested two tomatoes and a handful of snap peas. The okra is looking good and the pole beans are thriving!

 - We celebrated three graduating seniors with our church family on a beautiful Sunday afternoon with a picnic and volleyball. We enjoyed smores around the church fire pit after a Wednesday night prayer service.

- We visited New York City for a week. Part of Patrick's team is in that office so his manager sent him there to work for a week. I asked my manager if I could tag along and he agreed, so all we had to pay for was my train ticket!

This was our first big train trip. It took about four hours to get from Boston to New York. It was a nice, scenic ride, and train travel is so much more comfortable than air travel.

This was our view from the 14th floor patio in the office.

Here are some pictures from inside the NYC office:

On weeknights we mostly just wandered around. We were staying in this super trendy hotel with a floor to ceiling window into the shower. Good thing we're married!

NYC is way too cool for us. But I did enjoy going for a run on the High Line, and along the Hudson River. We also had the unexpected treat of being able to meet up with our friends Collins and Ashley, who were also vacationing there! (I guess we didn't take a picture though because I can't find it.)

One night we went on a late night quest for french fries. These were pretty great.

We stayed the night on Saturday so that we could have a day to explore the city. We went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, to the 9/11 Memorial, and to Central Park.

Well, July's not *quite* over yet so I'll take this as my cue to stop. Thanks for reading !

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

I don't even pretend to understand the whole poem but a coworker quoted the first line the other day and I will attest to the truth of those four lines, at least for the residents of New England.

Last weekend it snowed, probably six or eight inches worth over two days. Sunday the snow all melted, then Monday it snowed from before dawn until after dark. We headed home from work early to make it home before the slush on the sidewalk turned to ice. We went sledding at the park across the street as we hoped that it was our last opportunity to do so :)

Thursday was warm but poured rain, and it has turned cold again. Highs are in the 50s, lows near freezing, wind chill making it feel like the 30s most of the time. But...the sun is shining, we're getting more daylight hours, and flowers are beginning to bloom. The neighbors' hedges are starting to get leaves on them and there are red tips on the trees where new growth is beginning. It wants to be warm outside. But until it is I sit inside impatiently reading books and watching TV, wishing it were warm enough to be hiking, biking, running, or boating (or I'd just settle for not needing the down coat and wool socks).

Besides the prolonged winter we are doing just fine. We both had an encouraging week at work, as Patrick got a big chunk of work done, and I got some positive feedback from my manager on the work I've been doing. To celebrate Patrick's big accomplishment, we went out for a cupcake and ice cream on Thursday evening. And on Friday night we belatedly went out to dinner for Patrick's birthday at The Elephant Walk--we had originally planned on going a few weeks back but Patrick wasn't feeling well.

Otherwise we've been staying busy, mostly spending time with friends. I hosted Easter dinner a couple weeks ago, which was both great and chaotic. I did all the cooking on Saturday, and then, unknown to me until 8am Sunday morning, my refrigerator stopped working, holding all the food at about 55F overnight. I opened the refrigerator to get eggs to make muffins for our church's Easter breakfast and realized that nothing was cold. I burst into tears, with 18 people coming to dinner in just a few hours. But I was able to pull a pot roast together between church and people coming, and I served both the fresh food and the questionable food. No one died of food poisoning so I count that as a success. We had a lot of fun but I forgot to take pictures in all the stress and chaos.

Tonight we're sitting down with the calendar and trying to figure out how to allocate our vacation days this year. We feel like time is moving so fast and our calendars get full before we even know it. 

Oh, I've been meaning to brag on Patrick for helping me make such an awesome sewing cabinet:

 

He made that sewing table (nested in the wardrobe) to fit my sewing machine perfectly. With the pegboard everything is so much easier to get to! (If it doesn't warm up soon I'll have to start a new quilting project!)

first day of spring

Hard to believe it's been over two months since I last wrote!

Happy first day of spring! In celebration of the changing of the seasons, a nor'easter is headed our way, bringing 3-10 inches of snow overnight.  That's cool though. We'll see how it looks in the morning, we might work from home instead of trudging out in it.

For the most part, we did enjoy the snow! Every snow so far has been light and powdery. There's a really great sledding hill across the street from our house. One Saturday our friends Mark & Kimberly came and brought their little ones to sled. It was great because with their kids around it gave us a good excuse to get out there and sled too :)

It snowed a lot and stuck around for a while but honest to goodness it didn't affect our day to day lives too much. And while I'd prefer it to be warmer it wasn't that cold. Except Valentine Day's weekend. There were warnings out for "life threatening cold". Sunday school was cancelled at church so that the temperature might get above 0F before we came to church.That's how cold it was. To walk across the street from our car to church felt like knives stabbing into our lungs when we were breathing. Mercifully, that same day we flew out to California for a week for work, where it was 80F!

We had the Monday off so we enjoyed time in San Francisco. We went to the Exploratorium Museum and mostly just enjoyed being outside and seeing flowers in bloom and leaves on trees. We also saw a pretty epic sunset from the Presidio.

Although we were working all week out of the Mountain View office, it was a really great break. We enjoyed some of our favorite foods--Chick fil a! Krispy Kreme! We visited Daiso (a Japanese dollar store we enjoyed when we were living in LA). 

But more notably we accidentally tried out a different work rhythm than what we'd been keeping and it seemed to work a lot better. We ate dinner at work and got in around 7:30pm every night. Then we had at least 2 hours of free time before bed--no dishes, no cooking, just rest! So we decided to try that out here, and although it's getting us in a little later in the evenings than before I feel like we're resting better, spending less time on public transit, spending less time on chores, and in general our schedules are aligned better.

We also decided that last Tuesday would be our final week doing small group at Park Street. It's been a struggle to stay out late on Tuesdays and we felt like we were spending the rest of the week trying to catch up from lack of rest, and we also wanted to free up our schedule to pick up things at our new church. We've decided to pursue membership at Evangelical Baptist Church in Newton, which is just a few minutes from our house. They don't have small groups so we're still figuring out how to best participate in that community besides Sunday morning church, but there are several opportunities.

Last week we did a ski trip at work, which was super fun. I tried to snowboard. I can snowboard for like 10 feet, so I guess that's an accomplishment. Here is a video of my coworker attempting to snowboard down a hill. He is more skilled than I am:

Then we went to SC for the weekend for a wedding. 

We ate barbeque at the Smokin Pig, which is quite possibly the best barbeque in the world.

I got to catch up with my advisor, Dr. Hodges, and one of my "brother" Ph.D.s, Evan:

I also got to see Mrs. Hodges and their daughter Jordana, and deliver the quilt I had made for the Hodges:

We met the newest little Minto:

And then we headed in to spend some time with our families.Patrick went to Columbia to have dinner with his family and I went to Fort Mill to see my sisters and grandparents.

On Monday it was in the 80s. We skipped stones in the Catawba River.

...and when we returned to Boston that night it was 40F and raining. But that's okay :)

Otherwise nothing too interesting going on. We're hosting an Easter dinner next week so I'm sure I'll post some pictures from that next week!

let it snow

We are enjoying so much seeing the pictures of everyone back home playing in the snow! Mercifully, we were spared the worst of the winter storm this weekend. We got about six inches...which to southern ears sounds like a crisis, but really and truly it is not a big deal here. But let me tell you, it's not because northerners are tougher. It's because the snow is pure powder here. It's so cold that the snow won't even pack into snowballs or roll into a snowman, and it stays like that for days and days. It snowed a couple inches last weekend, and a lot of that had melted before Friday but most of it just stayed on the ground like powdered sugar. It's stayed so cold that there's no chance for the snow to melt and refreeze, making ice.

There are also snowplows that scrape and treat the roads. I wouldn't drive during a snowstorm like it was yesterday because the plows can't keep up when it's falling so fast. But today it'd be fine to drive. Our winter strategy is to not drive if we can help it, though.

We had Monday off so we did enjoy the snow then. We took a walk along the river a couple blocks from our house.

Otherwise we just sat around in our pajamas, which was pretty great. We had traveled to be with Patrick's family due to his aunt's passing. Although a sad occasion it was a good visit. We were also able to grab a meal with my parents, so that was nice.

It's been an eventful week. Our friend Melva from graduate school moved up a couple weeks ago, so we had her over for dinner on Thursday. Through a range of events too complicated yet boring to explain, three other friends ended up at our house so it was nice to have some company. We love having people over but are pretty far removed from most folks we know, so it's a rarity. On Friday we had an outing at work to an ice skating rink. My coworker, Josh, who plays ice hockey, tried to help me learn to skate because I am pretty pitiful. But I am convinced I could learn with some practice! There's a free rink across the street from our house. I'm thinking about buying some skates because it'd be nice to be able to do something outside on really cold days. We went out with our friends Mark and Kimberly on Friday to finally see the Star Wars movie. Yesterday we did pretty much nothing but watch the snow fall. It probably started around 3pm and didn't stop until sometime overnight.

I have this problem where back home, when it snowed we ate brownies and cookies and other treats because it was a special occasion. This is translating to me feeling the need to eat junk food pretty much all the time, since snow's on the ground! We did make cookies yesterday. The cookbook said that they were good for you because of the oatmeal and pecans in them (never mind the three sticks of butter, cup of brown sugar, and the whole bag of chocolate chips)...

Last night when planning for church we weren't sure how the roads would be this morning so we decided to go to a church within walking distance--Evangelical Baptist Church in Newton. Not that we had low expectations, but I think we were both pleasantly surprised. It's about a 15 minute walk (or an 8 minute bus ride + walk, or a 3 minute drive, with free parking, in a adequately sized parking lot, which is a huge deal here!). It's a small congregation but it felt comfortable to be a visitor. The teaching was solid, and the people were incredibly friendly. So I think we will visit again.

It's interesting trying to sort through what's really important in a church after you have checked off the essentials of good doctrine. What if a church is really convenient but you don't like the style? What if a church has people you naturally click with but is far away? What about the offered programs, congregational diversity, dedication to outreach, or a thousand other factors? I have a list of things in my head that are important but it's difficult to know how to weight each factor. I think there are definitely wrong choices but I don't know that there's a single right choice. But all in all I am pleased to report that in a widely unchurched city there are many sound churches to choose from.

Until next time!

Happy new year!

Ever since we got home from our travels (and honestly, probably a few weeks before that) I've been meaning to write. I wanted to take some more pictures of our house because a lot of you are curious, and I've been waiting for the house to get clean to do that. But, this post is inspired by a dear friend, who came to our clean-on-the-main-floor-only house last weekend, and said, "Gosh, I don't know how you keep all this space clean!" And I thought to myself what a blessing it has been over the years to walk into friends' messy houses, take a deep breath, and realize they don't have it together either. Thanks for letting me into your lives and not putting up facades. Here's my version of that.

Our living room is overtaken by all kinds of stuff. My grand plan was to get all the Christmas decorations put away Sunday and to get the house clean before going back to work. But Patrick has had an excruciating headache since Sunday morning so that's thrown a wrench in plans, and that's fine! There are more important things than housework. Cleanliness is not necessarily next to godliness.

You'll also notice we've dragged the extra couch into the living room (temporarily). We had the joy of hosting some dear friends on New Year's Eve to watch the Clemson game, so with this setup we could all sit comfortably together! We are so thankful for our sweet friends and the time we get to spend together.

We have a pantry, which is really exciting to me.

If you go upstairs, here is our bedroom. Patrick is hanging curtains that a kind coworker gave us in hopes of reducing the road noise that comes through our bedroom window.

We are looking for a new bedspread. In the meantime my grandparents got us a king sized, sherpa lined electric blanket that has been keeping us toasty warm during the freeing cold nights.

We have a nice bathroom off of our bedroom:

 It has a bathtub in the corner you can't see.

On that same floor is laundry, a bathroom, and two small bedrooms. One of those is set up as a spare-spare bedroom. The other is set up as a little office for us to share.

So far we haven't worked from home too often but it's nice to have the space in case we can't get to work one day (and so we can play computer games together).

If you go up the last flight of stairs, you get to the guest suite (which actually is clean, since we never go in it!) Please come stay with us here. It's super cozy. That open door is a bathroom.

I didn't take pictures of the garage or basement but you get the picture :)

So that's real life for you. Here's to a year of celebrating everyday living instead of waiting for things to line up better or turn out perfect before letting others in.

We had our first accumulating snow about a week ago. Sunrise is ~7:15 and sunset ~4:30 so unfortunately I didn't get any pictures in the broad daylight, except for the top one, which is our rooftop garden at work.

Call me a naive southerner, but I was genuinely surprised by how difficult it was to get around outside walking. I thought, oh, this city is used to the snow, so the sidewalks will be totally safe. Not true, at least for this snow! Ice is just as slippery here as it is in SC. 

The cold really hasn't been that bad. Even when it was 6F when I left for work yesterday. We made the decision early on to spend as much as was necessary (within reason) to keep us warm for the winter. I've not regretted my purchases so far. I bought nice boots, coat, gloves, hat, scarves, socks, and long underwear, and if I am wearing all that I can honestly say the cold is not a big deal (yet). 

Here's a quick list of some things going on:
- We had a really nice visit with friends and family over Christmas. We are so thankful we got to see so many people we love. We miss you all.
- We are still considering what to do about church. We love, love, love Park Street Church, but with it being far away we're trying to decide whether it's wise to try to find church closer. Less commute time translates into more willingness and more time to serve.
- In February I'll be escaping to CA for a week for some training, so it will be nice to see some warmer weather then.
- Paid time off is great. We're experiencing this for the first time in our lives.
- Please do pray for Patrick's headache. The doctor is sending him to an ENT specialist but it'd be nice if the pain would let up.
- We started playing Pandemic Legacy with some friends this past weekend. Super fun if you're looking for a new game and are up for a challenge.

Until next time, take care!

a long overdue blog post

Can you believe it's been three months since I've posted? I can't. Time is moving so quickly.

Here are some things that happened in the last three months:
- we moved to our new house
- both sets of our parents came to visit us
- we experienced our first Boston snowfall
- we traveled home for Thanksgiving

So where to start?

The house is only partially clean so I will withhold some pictures until I've tidied it. But here are a few carefully framed photos to hide the messiness (complete with Christmas decorations!):

We have two living rooms (it's a weird layout). We've set up our Christmas tree in the front room. I will take a better picture of the front room later on this week because we're expecting our new couch to be delivered on Wednesday!

Our other living room has a fireplace. We're still figuring out what to put on the mantle. But right now it's being filled with our "The Greatest Gift" advent ornaments. Thanks Lea!

One challenge in finding a place to live in Boston was finding somewhere with enough space for our table. Luckily this house does have a space.

Patrick is working on converting this wardrobe into a sewing wardrobe for me. I've already put some stuff in there but eventually I'll have a sewing table that folds down from it.

You can tell we've turned into New Englanders by the number of coats and boots we've amassed. (And scarves and hats and gloves, but you can't see those.) And you can tell we're city dwellers because we now have our own personal shopping cart (the blue thing). We live a block from the grocery store so I just walk with my little cart there. When we moved here a coat closet wasn't even on our list of things that would be nice to have. Now I'd put it at the top of the list for sure. When you have to take off ten things as soon as you hit the door it's nice to have a place for them!

More later. Our company holiday party is tonight so we're off to the masquerade ball!