Go together well

I've had two "golden" weekends in a row (i.e. both Saturday and Sunday off), and it's been really lovely. Labor and delivery is fun, but it can be stressful too...so it's nice to have the weekend to relax and regroup. Yesterday, we went to the Burlington Farmers' Market  and bought some purple carrots , stopped by a cute garage-turned-coffee shop  for cappuccino and a delicious " coffee toffee bar ," then picked up a baguette at a local bakery  before heading home to read my new  Vanity Fair and watch a few episodes of the extremely addictive  Orange is the New Black  on Netflix before dinner. Today, we hiked Camel's Hump Mountain --Tessie's first real mountain hike!  Tomorrow morning, I'll be back on L&D...I've been getting a bit more confident with my cervical checks, which makes life a lot easier! Chris is still on the hunt for a teaching job...we've been very surprised by the difficult job market for teachers i...

A belated 4th of July post. {adding my signature to the Declaration of Independence. Philadelphia, fall 2012} This morning, I read an article called America the Marvelous   in Vanity Fair. While the U.S. has undoubtedly made some questionable and even horrific contributions to world culture... Ke$ha, Walmart, willful insincerity (think: waiters/waitresses singing "happy birthday" to customers at Applebee's.  I absolutely hate the fact that it's your birthday and that I have to sing to you while clapping and pretending it's fun...but here's a free piece of lava cake! ), MTV's Teen Mom , Guy Fieri, planned obsolescence of consumer items (the pair of shoes from Payless that you purchase because they're cute, knowing they probably won't last the season--not that I've never been guilty of that), oversize cars, overprocessed food, etc. ...there have been some great contributions as well. For all the criticisms of the U.S., there sure are a l...

When we first started dating, Chris and I sat in a tetería (tea house) in Granada with our friend Andy and wrote out our top ten lists--it was a very fun activity, especially when we were first getting to know each other. We often refer to things as being "top ten," as in: "oh my gosh, this ice cream is so good--it's definitely top ten." I occasionally come across the lists that we made in my cute little Jordi Labanda notebook  from El Corte Inglés , and it's so fun to have that glimpse at what made us happiest back in October 2006 (I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but I know that mashed potatoes were fairly high on Chris's list at the time).  Yesterday, Chris was chatting with a friend who was having a rough week, and he recommended that she write a top ten list as a way of taking her mind off all the things that were going badly and instead thinking about what makes her happy in life. We're both big proponents of making top ten lists--...