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My updates have always been sporadic at best, but this year takes the cake for inconsistency with a whopping seven posts. Stellar, I know. I started drafts of several posts throughout the year and then never finished them. Lack of motivation probably had something to do with it. But with the new year approaching I'm launching a last-ditch effort to redeem my blog with some catch-up posts. The first is from July and can be found just below my last post, here. Additional posts over the next few days/weeks are in the future. Here's to trying!

"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"

Emphasis on the wore, as in past tense. Just took this out of my car. 

It's been there for 9 months and 5 days. Can't believe how good it felt to take it down. But it felt a heck of a lot better to see and touch this guy.

No, that's not a cardboard cutout. Jordan really is home from Afghanistan. Early. Trust me, I've pinched him plenty of times to make sure. And no, I'm not going to write about it all now. I'd rather be with him. But for all of your prayers, love and support, we are eternally grateful. Welcome home, soldier!

New England is through with us...

for now. Remember that school I got into? Well I did finally go, and I did love it, and now that my first semester is over I need to address the fact that my house looks like a library, an office supply store and a laundromat had a party and didn't clean up after themselves. And blog. I need to make a record before I forget about it all.

What I really want to document are the preceding events. Prior to going to my very first graduate residency on June 26th, my sis, my mom and I planned a whopping good time of a New England girls trip during which we spent about five days touring Vermont and Massachusetts. Credit is due to my Uncle Dixon, without whom we never would have strayed off the beaten path of tourist sights. The historian and genealogist in the family, Dixon prepped us with history, maps, pictures and lists of places to go that are connected to our ancestors. We took more pictures than you can shake a stick at, and what you see below only scratches the surface. So even if you don't read this, at least we'll have the memories. Where to start...

In Vermont, I suppose, since that's where we started. Flew into Burlington and the first thing we saw pulling up to the gate was a row of rocking chairs lining the big windows of the small airport. Who wouldn't want to rock in an airport? Or anywhere else, for that matter. Got our car,

a Chevy Malibu named Sadie, and headed to Stowe where we would be staying.

Side note: So as a joke I decided to take "the shirt" with me so that Jordan could be part of the fun in a Where's Waldo?/traveling gnome kind of way. The shirt went everywhere with us and many pictures were taken so that I could make him a kitschy photo book and send it to him overseas. I later discovered that some of the shirt pictures were the only pictures taken in certain locations, which is why you may see me holding the shirt every now and then.

So we stayed at the Stowe Inn

and we rocked

and posed by the random modern art sculptures that were placed throughout town.

(yes, those are giant yellow spoons hanging from a tree)

and we skipped down the covered bridges arm in arm. 

No pictures of the skipping, but I know you're imagining it right now. Covered bridges should be everywhere. Though it would be a little spooky at night a la Ichabod Crane, wondering if we'd have our heads coming out the other side.

We discovered the true meaning of green

and caught our first glimpse of history. You don't go to a cemetery in AZ and find plaques by graves indicating Revolutionary War veterans. Chills.

 Churches. TONS of churches.

And gazebos.

Fun little fabric stores. 

 I still wish I brought this little guy home with me.

We explored downtown shops

and got to know the locals.

After tasty sandwiches at a cafe downtown, we took a drive up the mountain and discovered why Vermont is known as the Green Mountain State. Gorgeous. Got out of the car to explore a bit only to be eaten alive by who knows what kind of bugs. But it was worth it. Canopy trees, massive rock with mossy faces--

perfect for getting our yoga on.

How CUTE is my mom?!

I attempted a little rock climbing. A very little.

And Heather found Ferngully. Or the tree of life. Seriously one of my favorite pictures from the trip.

(I promised her I wouldn't post the picture I took of her trying to climb down that rock face. It was a lot steeper than it looks!)

Next...Ben & Jerry's! 

You can bet we took the tour and loved it. The flavor of the day that they gave us in the taste testing room was Late Night with Jimmy Falon. It had chocolate covered clusters of potato chips. Weird? Yes. Delicious? Absolutely.

 We even went to the Flavor Graveyard

and mourned.

This ought to put things into perspective for you, in case you were wondering what's in the goodness.

And we went to the loo.

How cool is that?! How blue is YOUR loo?

After Ben & Jerry's we hit the Cold Hollow Cider Mill where we didn't have cider but we did have cider donuts. YuM.  

We tried for a photo op in another one of those cheesy wooden cutouts that you stick your head in as devout tourists always do, but we were foiled in our attempt by two spiders who were on the move. Big ones. Mom, recognizing the severity of the situation, came to our rescue. I believe her words were: "I will take them out if you want me to," armed with her newly acquired honey dipper.

 Thanks, Mom. You tell those spiders.

Tired from a full day of exploring we spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to print our tickets for our trolley tour in Boston the next day. Yes, we broke down and took a tour, because the thought of the three of us driving around Boston with a map made us all laugh and agree that we would see much more if we let someone else provide transport. Plus, it was supposed to rain all day and Boston in one day = impossible, so this was the best option for maximizing our time and minimizing our frizz.

So the next morning, bright and early, we made it to Boston. 

Without incident, I might add.

Before hopping on our tour we tried to use a restroom in a nearby shopping center. Turns out you have to buy something in the plaza to obtain a token in order to even get into the bathroom. Tricksters. We came out to find our trolley pulling from the curb, so we chased it down and branded ourselves the latecomers.

Oh well. Good thing you get a new trolley driver every time you get off and get back on. The cool thing about this tour was that you could get off at any of the stops and stay off as long as you wanted to explore, you just had to make sure you found your way back to the pickup spot. So we rode around for awhile

to get our bearings and decide where we wanted to stop. 

We didn't get a chance to see if they knew our names at Cheers--there was just too much to see so we didn't get off at that stop and had to take a picture from the trolley.

Our first hop off was here:

pretty much just to make Jason jealous, since there wasn't a game and we couldn't go into the actual stadium. But we were there, by golly, and have pictures to prove it!

Next we hopped back on and headed to Cambridge where we stepped off at MIT.

It was lunchtime so we stumbled into the equivalent of a food court/union and were lucky not to get run over. Not a single smile and you could feel the intellectual stress in the air. Overheard conversations included words I've never heard before juxtaposed with scientific theory and furrowed brows, while we sipped our cokes and ate our sandwiches, marvelling at the brain power creating the forcefield around us. We all sighed and took deep breaths when we got out of there. We bypassed Harvard so that we could move on to some of the other sights of interest.

Back over the bridge, we jumped off at Beacon Hill and fell in love with the historic district.

Mom saving the world one light post at a time.

Dog walkers! 

Living in the country you don't think about how different it must be to be a pet owner in a big city.

At the top of Beacon Hill sits the State House

where people were protesting immigration laws.

Granary Burial Ground

where this guy 

and this guy 

were buried, which is next to the 

Park Street Church.

Quincy Market

Faneuil Hall

We DIDN'T get lost, and that's what's so amazing!

Did I mention it was raining?

Our last stop was at Paul Revere's house in Little Italy. This picture kind of sums up our trip, as we are truly three of the most indecisive people on the planet. In fact Jordan laughed when I told him we were going. I believe his words were, "you'll be lucky if you make it out of the hotel room." Put us together and you sure as heck better give us a coin to toss. 

But there was no coin tossing outside the home of Paul Revere. You had to pay to take the tour and at that point we were fading. We knew we still had to drive to our hotel outside of Boston in rush hour traffic, so we took a picture and called it quits.

Oh yeah, and we stopped at The Cheese Shop, just for Jordan.

Next day was Salem, my favorite part of the trip. Dixon sent us the history of Susannah Martin, the mother-in-law of my mom's eighth great uncle, who was hung as a witch during the Salem witch trials in 1692. For more info on her click here. So we decided to go to the Salem Witch Museum to learn more about it.

Doesn't just looking at it give you chills?

Here she is under July 19th.

So they take you into this huge room sort of like a chapel with all the seats removed and they have you sit in benches along the side. All the way around the room are dioramas way up high and as they tell you the story of the trials they light up the diorama depicting that particular event. Spooky, emotional stuff. Then they take you through a short history of witchcraft and how the fear of it ignited mass hysteria among the Puritans. It would have been cool whether or not we had a connection to one of the accused, but knowing a little of her story made it that much more haunting.

Statue of Roger Conant, first settler of Salem, though we thought he was a witch at first.

Cemetery right next to the witch trials memorial.

The memorial is a big rectangle with stone benches all around, one for each of those executed. Most of them were buried in an unmarked mass grave and only the remains of a few were ever extracted, buried and marked, so the rest have been memorialized here.

Here is Susannah's. 

We ate lunch at Red's Sandwich Shop

where we had New England Clam Chowder, of course.

The Atlantic ocean 

right next to....

The House of the Seven Gables! 

The house 

is right next to Nathaniel Hawthorne's birthplace

and was owned by his cousin Susanna, as well as other ancestors who were involved in the witch trials, and Hawthorne based the novel The House of the Seven Gables on this house. Couldn't take pictures inside, but the tour was cool.

Next we drove to Marblehead, not far from Salem, to check out the Old North Church

where my mom's ninth great grandfather, Reverend William Walton, was the first pastor. We went in only to discover we were crashing a wedding rehearsal, so we promptly left. Around about this time we were getting tired and burned out. Traffic had been crazy (we've decided New England drivers took a different driving test or maybe didn't take one at all) and we won't mention the stress from the four way stop with only three stop signs or the fact that I dropped my camera - twice. We were definitely in need of some ice cream--ice cream always takes the edge off. Dixon had recommended a place so we walked through quaint Marblehead

to find Coffey Ice Cream. Just what we needed. I had yogurt that tasted more like real ice cream than any I've ever tried. Yum.

So that night we headed back to Stowe, VT in a rainstorm and made it to the Northern Lights Lodge where we stayed for the remainder of the trip. The next day we drove up to the Von Trapp Family Lodge (right). They weren't giving tours that day, but we went inside to the gift shop and walked around the grounds a bit.

Then we headed to Montpelier to check out my school. 

It's a small campus, so it didn't take long to walk around, but it was nice to see it before having to report the next day. 

We walked around downtown Montpelier (also small) ate lunch, did some shopping 

then drove back to Stowe to relax and get me ready for my first day at school. Before we left the next day, we had to get a final group picture. After MANY attempts, this candid one is probably my favorite.

If you made it to the end of this you probably spend too much time online. But if you did, thanks for sticking with me. That last day they dropped me off at VCFA (after the strangest lunch of our lives, but that will stay between us). I never checked the whole-go-away-to-college/be-dropped-off-by-your-parents experience off my list because I went to school in Flag. But I can imagine the fear I felt that day was similar. "Why on earth am I doing this" thoughts were creeping in, but Mom and Heather were there to encourage me and that meant the world. I love these women. They are everything to me and this is really the first time we've ever done something like this. Here's to making it a tradition.