experiencing summer

Gran & Pop arrived last night and we had an early 4th of July dinner with Sue and Joe. We had BBQ chicken, steak, roasted peppers, onions and zucchini, grilled corn and italian bread with butter. For dessert we had two amazing pies that Sue made from scratch. Apple and strawberry rhubarb with vanilla ice cream of course. I tried my apple with some sharp cheddar. It was actually pretty good!

Gran & Pop are staying at a nice B&B in Sutton, which is basically the closest accommodation to Sue & Joes house we could find. Hopefully tonight we will go to the fair to see fireworks, go on some rides and see some farm animals.

Finley started daycare last week. She will be going two days a week. It's a little weird because it's in a home setting, but there are some perks that aren't available at commercial places. We pay by the day and are allowed to change the day or cancel anytime. It's very flexible. It's not as structured as her previous daycare. They do arts & crafts other fun activities, but it's more like being at a baby sitter. I plan to put her in pre-school when she is closer to 3 and she is safe and has fun, so I'm not too worried. Also she is around some older kids that are very good with her, which makes me happy. Her favorite friend there is Lucas. She loves the cat, the baby dolls and unfortunately Barney. Of course they are quite surprised with the quantity she eats and so far the only time she's cried is when they ran out of food! She's a big eater!

We are having fun experiencing summer in New England. It's very different because it's so hot out! We spent a few days just swimming in the pool, Barbequing, going to scoop shops at night and last weekend we went to the Millbury carnival. It was just like the carnivals I went to when I was a kid. We had fun riding the ferris wheel and Finley even went on a few rides by herself.

Still no luck finding a house to buy or even anything promising. I really want a place with a pool and a mother-in-law, at least 1 acre and 3 bedrooms. I'm willing to be flexible on the location and age of the house..although the house has to be visually appealing. I have yet to find one that meets my criteria even with lowering my original hopes for an old house with at least 5 acres.

Natural Pet store in Gloucster

 The beach in Rockport from a few weeks ago

 Ben made us an amazing dinner of beer can chicken in fried string beans

The food festival In Worcester

Sue and Joes lovely house

 We went to the Beef Barn the other night which specializes in roast beef sandwiches. I had a steak sandwich with swiss and mushrooms and a piece of peanut butter pie for dessert. It was very good and very inexpensive. We need to go there for breakfast soon!

 Sue's pies from last night

Fried String Beans


by The Neelys

Ingredients

• Peanut oil, for frying
• 1 cup beer
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons salt, plus more for seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning
• 1 pound green beans, ends trimmed

Directions

Preheat oil to 375 degrees F.

Whisk the beer, flour, salt and pepper until smooth.

Dip green beans into batter to coat, letting excess drip off. Fry in the peanut oil in batches, until they are golden and crisp. Remove from oil with a spider strainer to a paper towel lined sheet tray. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2 months

We have been in Massachusetts for 2 months now.  We are still staying with friends in Douglas, MA. It's a great location in terms of the amount of property and it's beautiful, but hard to get used to the amount of driving required to get most places. We've been looking for houses to buy closer to Boston...basically half way between Ben's school and Boston, but haven't found anything yet. We've narrowed down the area to a few towns, but every house seems to be lacking one of the essentials for us. We aren't in a huge rush and are still set up with a rental house starting August 1st, so we'll continue to look until we find something ideal.

 For Fathers Day we went to the beach north of Boston. We checked out Gloucester, Rockport and Salem. We absolutely loved this area. We may end up moving closer to the beach once Ben is done with school. It was very much like Cape Cod. Lots of people walking around, hip restaurants, cute shops, beautiful ocean views. I also really like Northampton...so for a permanent location it will be a toss up between these two areas! Central Massachusetts (where we will be near Tufts) is beautiful, but I feel like we don't fit in as well as we would in another part of the state. Oh and our our house in Seattle is officially closed!

Finley is on the strangest sleeping schedule right now. She sleeps a lot! A typical day for her starts at around 11 am and then a nap from 3- 5 and then to bed around 10 pm. It's hard to get her off the cycle. When I go in her room in the morning. She sits up and says "good" and nods her head. She has been doing wonderfully in her new big girl bed. At first we put up a gate around it, but she actually just stays in bed until someone comes to get her. She also loves jumping up and down and saying "new bed!" "new bed!"

After getting up she typically starts talking about what she wants for breakfast. Lately all she wants is hummus and crackers with juice. But in the interest of keeping her eating a wide variety of foods, I try to give her something different everyday. After breakfast we usually go on some outing. Yesterday we went to Worcester to check out a locally owned toy store, where she got some toy cars and wooden blocks. We also usually take a scenic drive and look at the farm animals along the way. Then we come home and have lunch, which is usually leftovers from dinner, we play for a little while and then it's time for a nap. In the morning before 11 I usually have sometime to get stuff done and then during her nap I cook dinner and exercise the dogs. Although lately I've been running the dogs in the morning too.

Since Finley is up until 10 pm, we've been able to go out at night. On Saturday we went out to eat in Grafton at the Post Office Pub right near our future house. There was a live band and Finley had fun doing a little dancing. After that we went to watch the Millbury fireworks. We were pretty far away and all Finley cared about where the cars down below our viewpoint, but it was a fun night!

Last night we went of to a Food Festival on Shrewsbury St in Worcester. It was $25 for all you can eat samples at most of the restaurants on the street. We did a ton of walking and eating. It always feels weird to have that many different types of food, but most of it was really good. We had pasta, chicken wings, gelato, cream puffs, smoothies, sushi, tacos and pizza! Finley was a trooper and stayed in her stroller most of the time. I was impressed by the number of people there. The city is a little rough around the edges, but has a lot of character.

Settled

We are settled into Sue and Joe's house now and have sort of a routine figured out. Ben is now working full time at the Tufts Labs and I am watching Finley full time. Finley and I spend our time checking out local towns, farms, cooking, playing outside at the local zoo and various playgrounds. She is currently very obsessed with horses, cows and Elmo. Her language skills are growing by the day. It's amazing to hear her put words together. This morning she said "hair mouth", when she wanted help getting a hair out of her mouth and if she doesn't want something anymore she'll say "take this".  She hasn't quite gotten a rhythm to her speech, so there is often a pause between words. She is also getting very opinionated and has an unbelievable amount of energy. She is ready to be potty trained, but it's difficult to do when we aren't at our own house. The other day, she pooped on the toilet, but we aren't pushing for it too hard. We have another two months here.

Things are settled with our house other than needing some paperwork from the Shryock's, but they are cruising the Mediterranean. I am looking for houses to buy everyday, but we really haven't settled on a location and nothing is really sticking out at me. I'm not a huge fan of many colonials or capes unless there is a front porch. I'd really like a Victorian style house. This is definitely not the most important factor, but it's hard to get over a first impression. After being here for a month and experiencing the extreme heat and it's only May, a pool is becoming more of a necessity. I am willing to be more flexible about the age of the house as long as it's well made and the neighborhood is established. There is nothing I hate more than a generic new house plopped down on a freshly cleared lot in the middle of a subdivision.

Another factor to consider in towns to live is that I am thinking about going back to school! I didn't think this would happen and I'm not sure yet, but I am looking into Doctor of Physical Therapy programs. It's a three year program and the pay is so much better than what dietitians make, but I would need to retake the GRE, several prerequisite classes and get lots of shadowing experience. Anyway, if I decide to do this it would be to start around when Ben is done with his school. The dilemma is that I'm not sure if I'd get into a school in Boston or Western Mass. Luckily we have awhile to think about that and for now, I'm going to continue working as a dietitian to get more clinical experience.

We are leaving tonight for Ontario for another flyball tournament. We will stop drive about 3-4 hours tonight and then another 4-5 tomorrow.

We made it!

We have been in Massachusetts for almost 2 weeks now. We are feeling a bit like gypsies, moving between Sue & Joe's house, our trailer and a cabin on a nearby lake for a few days. Finley arrived with her Grandparents safely and got settled at a cabin they rented near Sue & Joe's house on Lake Manchaug. She has been adjusting really well to everything and is a good sport about the lack of routine in her life. For the first week Ben and I stayed between our trailer and Sue & Joe's house, spending time getting the trailer organized, driving around to different towns and taking care of stuff related to selling our house.

Here are some photos of our camping experience at Herkimer NY. It was the night before we arrived in Massachusetts and was the nicest KOA I've ever been to. 

Speaking of selling our house..it's not going that well. We were excited to have a buyer after just a few days. We accepted his offer, which I wasn't too thrilled with since we gave him more than I would like for closing costs. Then he did his inspection and it seems like he was really looking for something to be wrong. When he didn't find anything, he asked for money for future repairs and small things. He wanted $2500 after we had already given him more than we wanted. We counter offered $1000 plus a home warranty and now he is upset because the warranty (even the best one available) isn't as expensive as he expected. At this point we just want this to go through because we already missed our window for getting top dollar. We will know by the end of the week.

Anyway, after Frances and Kenneth left for Reno we moved into the cabin for a few days and just got back to Sue & Joe's today with Finley. Now we are all in the same house and our stuff is only in 3 different places! We are so thankful that Sue & Joe generously are allowing us to stay until August! Finley will be a lot more comfortable in the house rather than the trailer! We had a hard time finding a rental house, but did sign a lease for a 3 bedroom house in Grafton (the town that Tufts is in).

We are also trying to decide where we want to buy a house and are possibly thinking about investing in a house near Tufts, staying until Ben graduates and then moving to a location that we really want to be permanently. The towns that we like the most locally so far are: Shrewsbury, Hopkinton, Holliston, Grafton. There are still quite a few that we haven't seen yet.

We are experiencing major culture shock. New England is quite a bit different than Seattle and even where I grew up in New Jersey. It's very old. Most of the towns were established in the 1600s, which of course means lots of history and farming/manufacturing that occurred in the towns. The town we are in now is pretty rural. There is a small downtown with a few restaurants and shops, lots of wooded areas, lakes, ponds. It's beautiful, but will take some getting used to.

 Sturbridge is one of the towns we are thinking about moving to. We took a hike there and went out to lunch after. It's a good fit for us because it's got a nice town down and lots of open space. It's also convenient access to New York. The only downside is that it's far from Boston and not the most convenient location to Tufts for Ben.

The lake cabin

Almost There

We drove from Cheyenne to Lincoln, Nebraska and then to Amana, Iowa without any major issues. The weather was amazing until we got to Nebraska, other than the wind on the highway. It's been rainy and cold here in Iowa. We have electric hooks though and two powerful space heaters, so we've been staying nice and warm. The driving has been going well. Ben usually leads with the truck and trailer and I follow with the Escape and the dogs. We find places to stop and run the dogs, but generally we stop as little as possible. I'm almost done listening to the 3rd book of the Hunger Games...that's a lot of driving time! There's been a cold that has passed between everyone in our family. I thought it was so great that I didn't get it. I held out for a long time, but it hit me hard. I'm trying to sleep a lot and take it easy.

Just when I was so sick of driving, we stopped in Amana for 3 days for a flyball tournament. It was awesome! We had lots of fun and the camping was great with full hookups. They even had inexpensive breakfast and lunch to buy. The Amana Colonies happens to be a tourist attraction, with lots of restaurants and shops with handmade goods. It was originally a self-sufficient religious, German colony. Our extent of the experience was going to the Ox Yoke Inn for some German food. The food was very good, aside from the peanut butter chocolate pie that was most definitely pudding pie and our extremely overly attentive waitress. I'd love to go back and check out the furniture shops and wineries. On Sunday night we met up with my friend Amy from nutrition school for dinner at a gourmet restaurant in Cedar Rapids, called Class Act. It was fun to catch up and have some time away from the trailer!

The Ox Yoke Inn

 

A generous flyballer made us a few cocktails

 Ben had a Walking Taco for Lunch. It's a bag of crushed up doritos with ground beef, cheese and lettuce. Apparently a popular midwest food that I had never heard of!

Today we had a long drive from Amana to a campground near Toledo, Ohio. Even with a three day break, it was a long, tiring day. I am ready to be done with this drive and get to Massachusetts. We are in desperate need of clean laundry and groceries. Tomorrow we are driving to Upstate New York. I cannot wait to see Finley. We miss her so much, but she is handling the situation as if nothing happened. We talk to her every night and she sounds very happy. She is sleeping and eating a lot as usual and enjoying undivided attention from her Gran and Pop. 

on the road

Well we are finally on the road. We left on Friday. It's been really chaotic, but exciting! Getting our house ready to sell was going really well until the last day. We were able to put Fin in daycare for several days, which was very nice because while she was eating snacks, playing and napping we were cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and some packing too.  We stayed at La Quinta for 3 nights, which was nice but made things more complicated. We had a hard time organizing everything between the truck, trailer and moving truck.

The last day was pretty awful. We thought we had just a few things left to do, but of course everything takes longer than expected and I ended up leaving with the dogs and Finley at around 3 pm. We then realized that Ben wouldn't be able to leave until 7 pm and our planned stop was 5 hrs away...which even with stopping in Portland for dinner would leave Finley and I and the dogs by ourselves at the campsite for several hours waiting for Ben with the trailer.  Luckily, we were able to cancel the campground reservation and get a hotel reservation. Fin and I met Brooke for some yummy Thai food and then headed down to Salem to good old La Quinta. Unfortunately, they didn't have any dog friendly rooms and it was too late to change hotels, so the dogs ended up staying in the trailer. It was a long, long awful day, but so nice to finally be done with the house and on the road.

The next day was so much better. We went to Mt Shasta and got into town at around 5 pm. We set up the trailer and then took the dogs to the dog park and Finley to a playground. We decided to skip cooking and went out to a local pub for dinner. It was a nice relaxing evening in the most amazing weather. Later that night Finley woke up in the middle of the night coughing, but went back to sleep after some cuddling and some heat in the trailer.

The following day we got to Reno at around 2:30 pm. We had some time to finalize the paperwork for selling our house and relax with Gran and Pop. The dogs loved running in the nearby golf course and we took care of lots of errands and organizing of the trailer. Finley enjoyed her sleeping arrangements and caught up on much needed sleep..she had been going to bed at 11 and waking up a 8 am. A girl needs at least 12 hours of sleep! We traded cars and now have a Ford Escape, which is a bit bigger and 4WD. I'll get used to it quickly with all this driving! We celebrated Finleys birthday on Monday with an ice cream sundae and we said goodbye until May 3rd. Ouch!

This morning we left before Finley woke up and heading out of Reno at around 9:30. We arrived in Salt Lake City at 7 pm, but lost an hour so we were in a bit of a rush to get the dogs some exercise, heat up leftover ribs make by Pop along with some frozen vegetables and finalize the organization of the trailer. We put all our clothes "away", put away the extra toiletries that we aren't using, organized the dogs closet and put a new memory foam mattress pad on the bed. Whew. Tomorrow we are going to Cheyenne, Wyoming - a 7 hour drive.

craziness

Next week at this time will be our last night in Seattle! Ahhh! We've gotten a lot done since I last posted. The garden and painting is basically done. The garage still needs some work, but thats Ben's department! The kitchen is packed and we are using the cooking stuff from the trailer. I cleaned out the food cabinets, packed some stuff, set some aside for the trailer and made a bag for donation. Based on the food we have left, we will be having Matzoh ball soup tonight and Enchiladas tomorrow night. I HATE wasting food, so when I went food shopping today I bought as little as possible and will try to eat only food in the house. It makes for some interesting meals!

This past weekend we left Finley with her grandparents for 3 nights for the first time! I missed her. A lot and missed her even more when I talked her to on the phone and she said "hi mama" in her happy little voice. The thought of leaving her for almost 2 weeks is terrifying, but we have no choice. It also doesn't help that we will miss her birthday! She would be miserable in the car with us for that many days and will have so much fun with her Gran and Pop.

With all the craziness going on, we took a trip to Victoria for a flyball tournament last weekend. Our friend Sue came to visit for it and we completely took several days off to tour around Seattle and take the ferry to Victoria. We went to the Pike Place Market and the Duck Tour here and visited the inner harbour in Victoria. Of course the ferry ride speaks for itself.  I needed that little break! I didn't think about all the things that are stressing me out and then when we got home it hit! We are leaving so soon!

 
 

23 Months

Finley is a very busy girl. She still sleeps very well, from 8:30-9:30 and naps from 1-4. Yeah that's not a lot of awake time, but when she's awake she really lives it up. She is non stop trying to feed the dogs, empty cabinets, put various clothes on, play with the dogs, "reorganize things", open and close doors. She seriously doesn't quit. The only time she stops moving is when it's time to eat and then she goes big too. The other morning she was eating cereal with fruit and I was eating a leftover Reuben sandwich. She was asking for some and I said you won't like it, but gave her a piece of sauerkraut to try. She liked it and ended up eating 1/2 my sandwich. Lately she's been really into being held, which is fine most of the time, but hard when Im trying to get something done. At least she doesn't care who it is that picks her up!