8) Celebrate anniversary with something new

Summer list time!  They're my favorite "to do's" of the year, spanking all other months, like say "Make 100,876 copies of worksheets" in September.  I'm guessing you wouldn't want to hear about that one, right?

Anyway, I was going to get my act together to think of something new and creative to do for our anniversary.  I wanted to forgo the usual dinner and movie.  I kept searching the Internet for ideas and had the best intentions, but with preparing for summer school and a trip to see my parents, I completely flaked.  

Luckily, Dan didn't!  He planned a surprise trip, courtesy of a Groupon he bought to this historic inn in Luray, Va.   You definitely have to make your own fun in Luray, which consists of about five stop lights, but he knows how much I can't get enough of the mountains.  Love this man.

Anyway, here's the classy front of the hotel.  Kind of looks like a place made for a mint julep.


      We basically spent the first day just taking in the landscape and dipping in the hotel's pool.  I forget  how much I love the mountains until I see views like this again.

What else?  Oh, Luray had one cute sandwich place that we checked out, and I just wanted to share the charming inside.   I loved the bike and the old school card catalog.  There is something very cozy about a bookshelf so tall that you need a ladder.

Luray is not really known for its culinary scene, so we just had greasy mexican for dinner to mark the 'ole six year.  Sidenote:  It's very hard to snap an iPhone pic at arm's length and hold up six fingers at the same time, so excuse the awkwardness.

Beers and rocking together on the front porch = two old souls just kicking it

The next day, we continued to celebrate with our little field trip to Luray Caverns.  Yes, it was as cheesy as it sounds.  Our guide deserved a Mr. Luray Caverns 2012 sash with being so sweetly enthusiastic and eager to tell his cave jokes throughout the entire tour.

Our guide:  "This formation is what we call "The Ice Cream Cone'.  Can anyone guess what flavor?? 

No?

Anyone?

ROCKY ROAD!"

This guy had his audience eating out of the palm of effing his hand.  You would have thought he was Will Ferrell.

There's also an organ that creates music by vibrating off stalagmites.  Our guide dubbed the music: "Tunes from 'The Stones'." 

You know the jokes on the candy wrappers?  If Hubba Bubba gum ever needs new writers, this guy would be a shoo-in.

Still, it was kind of neat to see the caverns I used to walk through as an awkward eleven year old on our family camping trip... while wearing a fanny pack... and tapered jeans... and a sweatshirt I had glammed up with puffy paint. 

Memories.

Anyway, we finished our trip with a picnic at Lake Arrowhead:

Not much to say about this.  We just ate and took a paddleboat around this scenic lake:

 

Two more summer to do's coming this week!   

12 Summer Things

Dan and I had our first official day of summer, and we spent it with our usual tradition:

Sneaking into our old apartment pool

Gorging on Dairy Bar milkshakes

That's it.  It's the perfect summer afternoon. 

This is our sixth straight year of sliding into our apartment pool.  We are not usually sneaky people, but when we moved out from our absolutely awful apartment years ago, we kept our pool card with us.  It was our way of comically "sticking it to" the rental company while being able to still keep cool in 99 degree Virginia heat. 

Just because it bears repeating, our old apartment managers were the worst.  Once, we had a family of squirrels living in the attic space above our second floor apartment, and we kept calling and calling to try to get the maintenance people to trap them.  We got a response a month later.  That's four weeks of tapping squirrel claws waking us up nightly, folks. Another time, we walked repeatedly down to the main office to pick up wedding gifts that had been mailed to us, and were told again and again from various people that nothing had arrived.  One visit in the office, Dan went to use the bathroom, and saw a huge pile of gifts clearly marked to us in the back corner.  Perhaps someone else wanted to sneak out with our china?  I dunno.  But that sealed it for us.  We decided on move out day that sneaking into their pool for the next decade is the moral equivalent of making tenants deal with vermin and have to sleuth out their missing blender. :)

Anyway, afterwards, we went to this mom and pop diner a few blocks from our house aptly named The Dairy Bar. 

It's rated as one of Richmond's best place for shakes.  Dan always gets the chocolate peanut butter one and I always order the white chocolate raspberry truffle.  Heaven.

I love that this diner's got this board with pictures of people traveling to different world locals wearing their cheesy Dairy Bar shirts emblazoned with a cow eating ice cream.  Notice the below pic of a couple at Stonehenge sporting them:

No shortage of cow decor.  This place knows how to milk a theme.  Wink. Wink.

I always feel like summer has officially started once we have this afternoon together.

Other stuff I want to do this summer that doesn't include organizing or anything else boring includes:

1.  Learn to use my DSLR camera

2. Go to an outdoor summer concert

3.  Make homemade ice cream

(always on my list, never get around to it!)

4.  Put together cute theme gift for Bethy

5.  Create photo books for all recent vacations

6.  Read five new books (seems like a doable, if not random number)

7. Cook five new dishes (again, seems doable)

8. Celebrate anniversary with something new

9.  BBQ and baseball game

10. Try something new on Pinterest

11.  Beach trip with family

12. Trivia night with friends

and one more I just added today:  13.  Visit a farmer's market (always wanted to, always forget)

Anyone else have a summer list going on?

SSSScchoooolll's out for the summa'?

 The last week of school might seem like one big party in, say, the opening scene of Dazed and Confused with KISS blasting in the background, but it wears. my. ass. out. every. year.

I always feel completely rung out the last week: the grades, the packing, the shredding documents, the last minute meetings, the feeling irritated by the spazzy 8th graders who are on level twenty (out of ten), the wondering if I made a difference at all, and the answering last minute e-mails written in ALL CAPS from disgruntled parents trying to get me to change grades.

I guess I'm the one weird teacher out there who feels kinda low at the end of the year, spent of all energy and am ruminating about whether I should keep teaching indefinitely.  Whether I have it in me. 

This happens to me every single year, guys.  I've even mentioned it before here.  I guess it's like my friend Mali who inevitably feels low on her birthday, even when she turned twenty-one.  At least I've come to expect about three days of sleeping in way too late and Googling "jobs for English majors" before I'm back to feeling normal again.  Usually, after sneaking in to my old apartment pool to sunbathe a few times does my self some good.

I usually don't ask for responses or anything, but I'm genuinely curious, so if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them.  Do any of you ever soul search about your job? Like after a really shitty day?  I guess other jobs aren't really cyclical, so maybe no one else has the every so-predictable variety of emotions: 

 September- Girl Meets Year!  She is overwhelmed, but ready to begin.

 October- Loving teaching Poe

 Nov-Dec- Wow, it feels like the year is flying by!

 Jan- First fight (AKA: state assessments)

 Feb-March- Bumping along

April- Spring break!

May-As predictable as a rom com chase scene:  I'm in testing hell again

June- FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD, WHEN WILL THIS YEAR BE OVER??

I'm genuinely curious if this happens to anyone else, so if it does, let me know.  If your job is always two hour lunches and benefits and bonding retreats and rainbows, don't tell me.  Or do, and specify how I get that job!

 I'm honestly not trying to write this for any kind of life advice; I just thought it was interesting and a little funny how this happens every year.  It's kind of random to think how I've never not been in school. From kindergarten to present day, I've either been a student, student-teacher, or teacher. But you knew that already.

Because of the nature of my job, I sometimes think of the parts of other careers that I have never experienced. Like, I have never given out a business card and never cashed a bonus check.I've never done a trust fall at a company retreat and never worked from home. I've never high fived after scoring an account.
 Oh, and I have never had to further explain my job title at a party. "Teacher" is universally understood, unlike, say, "I'm a human resources director" which could mean many things.

But...I've also never missed a beach week. I've never been stuck in an office. I've never filled out a TPS report or had to wear a suit to work or watched the clock tick by. You can't do that when you have thirty middle schoolers staring at you expectantly.  I generally am busy.  I'm hardly ever bored.  I feel like I'm good at my job and love so many parts of it.

No more ruminating or thinking about summer school that begins in a few weeks.  I'm already feeling more relaxed just writing this.  Tomorrow, I'll post my more cheery "School's out for the summa!" list.  I can't underestimate the power of, say, homemade icecream and a few hours at the pool.  Really, those things (and some time off) make so much of a difference.

The Pie Bride

Dan and I spent another weekend at a wedding stalking cater waiters.  (Our strategy is to mingle near the entrance from the kitchen where they come out.  No, we don't play around when it comes to snagging bacon-wrapped scallops on toothpicks.)  This weekend's wedding was my cousin Jen's, and it was kind of like A Mid-Summer Night's Dream meets Top Chef... dreamy and delicious.

I always enjoy an unnecessarily detailed wedding breakdown, so here are just a few photos for anyone else who used to watch the occasional TLC Wedding Story while wearing yoga pants too.  Or just me? 

My uncle walking Jen down the aisle.  You can see that the bridesmaids (in background) were allowed to each choose their own dress in light pink:

Next, meet the happy couple! Jen is one of the coolest people I know: stylish, beautiful, funny, quirky, and modest. Also, she's an aspiring food critic who lives in New York City and invents her own dishes, like savory ham and cheese cookies. I don't know much about Josh except that he teaches fourth grade in New York, which strikes me as being a very giving and patient person.

We left the church and a school bus (a wink to Josh's job) brought hotel dwellers to the beautiful manor house for the reception.  When we arrived, Dan and I signed the guestbook (see below).  I've never seen this idea before!  Guests put their thumb in colored ink, press as leaves on this drawing of a tree, and then write their name.  It struck me as such a cute play off "Family Tree" and is definitely a sentimental piece of art for their future home.

Here is an obligatory picture of us  on the grounds before we started mauling the shrimp. 

I was too busy knocking back drinks to take too many detail shots, but I did get one of the table: sweet galvanized tins with herbs and roses and daisies. 

My sis and I during cocktail hour:

The couple put disposable cameras and incognito eyeware on the tables, along with a photo scavenger hunt ("Take a pic of a cute couple!"  "Take a pic of a moustached guest!")  As seen in my last post, Bethy and I can't resist a cheesy photo complete with props.


     Anyway, Bethy, Dan, and I kept talking about how we noticed Jen's attention to detail everywhere, especially in the food.  It was as eclectic and cool and New Yorky (yes, that's an adjective now) as she is:

 Savory cones filled with raw tuna and avacado

Scallops wrapped in bacon

  Falafel Bar

 Peking Duck Rolls

Katz's Pastrami from Lower Manhattan

 Israeli Couscous Salad

The favors: little brown boxes filled with maple and walnut turnovers, wrapped in twine, and decorated by Josh's fourth grade students

 You can always tell when a bride is having fun at her own wedding, and Jen definitely was enjoying all the food she spent months picking out.  When I asked if I could have Dan take a picture of her and her brother Justin with Bethany and me, she asked, "Is it okay that I keep holding this piece of beef??" 

See her app in hand in the below close-up?  Dan commented on how it was so refreshing to see her relish in the food as much as the guests!  This girl's a chef, for goodness sake!  Food is her life.

The adorable couple:

The big white tent reminded Dan and me a little of our own weddding, except we weren't drowning in sweat at this one. :) 

It was really magical later that night when all the lanterns and sparkly lights were aglow and fireflies were out in the yard.

Josh and his family are Jewish, so the couple was hoisted in the air for the Hora.  Jen's expression when she first got up there is priceless- ha ha!

Instead of wedding cake, Jen ordered three types of pies:  Key Lime, Apple Crumble, and Strawberry Rubarb.  There are no words to how freakin' psyched everyone was when these came out.

The absolute favorite moment of the night?  My entire family, Dan, and I were dancing to Black Eyed Peas, and we looked over and saw Josh with a plate with enormous slabs of each type of pie.  He and Jen were busting a move, and every whoop from Fergie and the gang ("Let's do it, do it, do it again!") he would feed her forkfuls so she didn't miss out on one taste.  There she was... laughing, twirling, and leaning in to savor more. 

That's why Dan and I now call her "the pie bride". :)