62. May 27th, 2011 Picture.

So, as some people can understand, the idea of writing 4 uber long posts about our Maine trip have overwhelmed me enough to shun my blog for the past week.  Subsequently making me fall farther behind in posting, therefore perpetuating my overwhelmedness.  Ah, such is life.

But here I am - putting my nose to the grindstone, or fingers to keys, to write about our awesome Memorial Day weekend trip.  Let's start with the view from the balcony outside our room.

Try to look past the parking lot and admire the OCEAN.  We were right across the street from Short Sands, smack in the middle of 'downtown York'.  Let's be real, there is no downtown, but our room was above a restaurant and a liquor store, so it worked for us.

It was a gorgeous day when we arrived, though it was a touch too cold for me to head to the beach - le sigh.  At the beginning of the summer is get absolutely crazy, wanting to spend every waking minute on the beach soaking up sun and warmth and awesomeness.  Oh who am I kidding, I spend all summer hogging the sun, and I was a touch disappointed that the holiday weekend weather called more for clouds and drizzle than golden rays.  I was uber excited however to spend the weekend relaxing, completely unplugged from the world.  Ratty and I made a pact on Friday, saying we wouldn't really use our cell phones, no Facebook, Twitter, texting, etc.  We were just going to relax and have fun.  If you can do that without checking your phone every 3 minutes.  We survived so I'm sure it's possible.

So obviously once we arrived, checked in and got settled in our room, we cracked open a few Coronas and sat on our deck people watching and listening to the ocean.

We spent the remainder of the day poking around the town, checking out a few stores and scoping out the best location to watch the Bruins game that night.  Remember when they were in the race for the Stanley Cup last year?  Well, we all know how awesome that turned out for us, but for the next few weeks we're going to have to suspend reality for a bit and just roll with it, there is a lot of hockey coming up on the blog!

Ratty googled a few places nearby and we discovered that Buffs Pub at the Union Bluffs Hotel was the best place to watch the Bruins that night.  We headed up there a little before the game started, hoping to snag a seat at the bar.  Apparently everyone in town had the same idea, so we just ordered a few beers and waited the crowd out, hoping that a few might leave once they finished dinner.  We were able to nab 2 seats at the bar once a large group left, and we settled in for the rest of the night.  Of course, we can't go anyplace without seeing people we know, and being in York was no exception.  Ratty ran into a friend from college, you know, from Ithaca, in upstate New York, and it just so happened that this friend always spent Memorial Day weekend in York - what a small world!  They were just picking up food and were heading back to their rental, so we said our goodbyes and turned our attention to the game.

The Bruins really made us sweat through this entire series.  Being a Boston sports fan is naht easy.

Not the greatest shot, but we were obviously not the only ones on pins and needles.

The game was really intense, and the fact that it was dragging on and on was not helping matters.  York is a pretty quiet town, and since Buff's was the only place showing the game the place was packed.  The time inched closer to 11pm, and Ratty and I started to panic that the pub might close, leaving us with no place to watch the game.  Wouldn't that have been horrible?!  Why do we do that to ourselves?!  Thankfully there was no reason to panic, they stayed open and we got to watch the Bruins win.  Thank Goodness, it would have been a really sour note to start our vacation on!

This photo is not the best, but I promised I'd try to take more pictures of real people, so, here you go.

Day One down.  So much more awesome VacationLand recaps to come!

62. May 26th, 2011 Picture.

I realized that I messed up my postings, skipping straight to my Maine-cation and skipping my Thursday night gala attendance.  How could I skip going to a swanky event I'll never know, but I did.

Since me and my co-workers have become such good friends with our Community Relations department, and have volunteered for lots of events through them, we've been invited to some pretty swanky events, much like the Starry Starry Night Gala for City Year.  

The event has become one of the more successful gala's in Boston, and I think it's pretty safe to say that there were at least 600 people at this event.  They did a program showcasing all the work that City Year had done in the past year, and featured students from schools that participated in the program.  It was really interesting to hear students accounts, and learn more about what the organization does as a whole - here is a description of City Year from their website:  "City Year is an education focused, non profit organization that unites young people of all backgrounds fora  year of full-time service to keep students in school and on track to graduation".

The event was great, so informational yet entertaining, PLUS it featured the best dessert bar on the planet!

I was only able to grab one macaron, but trust me, I wanted to eat 500 of them.  I love macarons.  I want to learn how to make the perfect one.  Maybe I'll try and blog about that next!

We had a great time, and I would have loved to stay until the end of the event [it ran until midnight, which is a touch late for a school night], but most of the guests I knew had to drive home, so we opted to have one more glass of wine and then call it a night.  I needed to rest up for our big weekend away in Maine!

102. GET ENGAGED!

I am VERY excited to announce that while on Nantucket two weekends ago, Ratty proposed!  

As you can imagine, we have been VERY busy celebrating for the past...oh, two plus weeks, so I haven't had any real time to get any quality writing done.  I wanted to share our engagement on the blog since it is SO BRAND NEW AND SO EXCITING!  Plus, this 6 month lag time is really crimping my style lately.

So who wants to hear the story of how Ratty proposed?  Oh, I do I do!  Alright, so as you can remember from last year, we bought an uber discounted weekend on Nantucket from Rue La La, so this year we did it again - except buying TWO weekends!  I know, high rollers!  We left Friday morning, October 28th, shooting down to the Cape to catch the 9:15am ferry.  I guess Ratty's plan was to do it on the boat so we'd be able to arrive in Nantucket and celebrate, but plans somewhat became unraveled.  And by somewhat I mean completely.  My cousin Rich called about 10 minutes into the trip, telling me that our Uncle Phil was taken to the hospital [don't worry, he is totally fine, though we didn't know it at the time!]  I hadn't heard anything about Uncle Phil, so I immediately called my mom to see if she had any updates.  When she didn't answer, I called my brother Eddie, asking if he'd talked to mom.  This whole game of phone tag had gone on for almost a half hour, and unbeknownst to me, Ratty was absolutely panic stricken.  He'd asked my mom for her permission and had also called my siblings to ask for their blessing, so Ratty was petrified that Eddie would answer the phone screaming 'CONGRATULATIONS!' since he knew the proposal was happening that morning.  Not to mention that Ratty thought Rich was calling to congratulate us, so needless to say tensions were high.  I repeat high.

Again, I had no idea.

We docked into Nantucket around 11:30am, dropping our things off at our B&B and walking around town, soaking up our favorite streets and shops.  I finally heard from my mom around 12:15 and she told me that Uncle Phil was fine and was discharged.  I thought Ratty was just being really concerned, asking how he was doing, but little did I know Ratty just wanted the high sign to go ahead with proposing!  Poor kid must have been dying.

We grabbed lunch at the Rose and Crown, absolutely stuffing ourselves into a coma, well I did at least.  I opted to only have water with lunch, trying to hydrate myself and ward off any unfortunate migraines while on vacation.  Ratty chose the opposite route, downing a pint glass sized vodka soda before ordering lunch and subsequently ordering Guinness after Guinness.  Now here I thought he was just uber excited to be on vacation, but turns out he was downing drinks trying to calm his nerves!  In hindsight, I seriously don't understand how I was so clueless.  I should have obviously been suspicious.  Heck, I was suspicious any time Ratty ask me to leave the apartment.  

We went back to our B&B to check in and ended up falling asleep for a good chunk of the afternoon.  Well, again, I fell alseep, I am pretty sure that Ratty spent the 3 hours pacing the floor willing me to wake up.  As soon as my eyes popped open, I could tell something was up.  Ratty's eyes were all darty, and he was fidgeting an awful lot.  I brushed my teeth and started to freshen up when Ratty reminded me that it was GLOBAL Champagne day.  Um hi, best day ever!  He said there was something that I would probably like in the fridge, and with Ratty's long track record of secretly packing Champagne, I figured thats what he was hiding.  I opened up the fridge and next to the bottle of Champagne was a blue box from E.B. Horn.  I started crying immediately, repeatedly asking Ratty 'What is this?!' I mean, hi Amy, obviously it's a ring!  He gave me a faux newspaper article, announcing our engagement.  He had my mom write up my portion, which obviously made me start crying even harder.  He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  I immediately said YES and then started GUSHING about the ring, it is absolutely stunning!  Apparently he didn't hear me say yes, so he just kept looking at me, waiting.  Eventually I said yes again, popped the Champagne and called our families to tell them the exciting news!  

Ch-ch-check it out!  Isn't it so perfect?  I love it!  I love vintage settings and this one is absolutely amazing.  Ratty did good!

62. May 25th, 2011 Picture.

Last year Ratty and I escaped the city for a night, heading to Gloucester over Memorial Day weekend.  This year we tried to nab a spot at the same awesome B&B, Blue Shutters, but unfortunately they were all booked up already.  We thought of different cities/towns to visit, looking at Portsmouth, Portland  and a few spots on the North Shore, before finally settling on York, Maine.  I'd be up there many times before, my aunt used to live right on Long Sands, then had a house on Short Sands for a bit before moving out to Wells.  Ratty hadn't been up there in YEARS, so long ago that he could barely remember the town, but he was up for a nice relaxing vacation right across the street from the beach.  

I called around to a few motels that I knew of on Short Sands, my preferred beach location, as it is within walking distance to all the things in the cute little town.  We ended up getting a pretty sweet deal at the Sands by the Sea motel, right across the street from the beach, where we got 3 nights for the price of 2.  We had initially been thinking of leaving early Saturday morning and coming home on Monday, but with the free extra night, we planned on skipping town early and heading up to Maine on Friday after work.

I packed up Thursday night, but left a last minute list of things I needed to throw together before heading to work on Friday.  I can never pack in one fell swoop, I always have things I need to remember, like shower stuff, my blowdryer, make up, toothbrush, retainer, YES I wear a retainer, all the cool kids do.  All that stuff needs to get packed last since I tend to need it the morning I'm leaving.  Putting a list on top of my bag makes me sleep a little better the night before, knowing I'm not going to miss something.

62. May 24th, 2011 Picture.

I got the bridal shower invitation to my niece Jena's wedding in the mail and I just need to share how lovely it was.  Her shower is actually on a Saturday night and it is more of a cocktail party than a traditional bridal shower, which I love!  No offense to anyone, but sometimes sitting at a bridal shower can be brutal.  You can be stuck at a table with people you don't know,  gift opening can take hours, and presents can only be so exciting when not for you.  I love the idea of a non-traditional shower, I mean, who doesn't love a cocktail party?!

Unfortunately, I won't be able to go to the shower because that is the weekend of Miss Erin Rowe's bachelorette party, but my mom is going and I'm sure it will be a great time!

62. May 23rd, 2011 Picture.

I bought these flip flops.  At Forever 21.  For $6.  They are awesome and perfect and I'd been hunting for a pair JUST like them for months.  I just thought I'd share.

Full disclosure, I know that sometimes my blogs aren't all that exciting.  But, I'm cool with it!

62. May 22nd, 2011 Picture.

I channeled my best Mommy Dearest impression while helping Ratty clean out his closet.

NO WIRE HANGERS!

Ratty's closet needed a good ol' purge and I was the perfect person to help him.  One of the first points of order was to get rid of all the horrible, disgusting, vomit inducing wire hangers that were holding up all of his clothes.  HIS GOOD CLOTHES.  Nice work shirts were hung haphazardly on icky hangers, not buttoned, off center, with the corner of the hanger poking out of the chest.  Deep breaths everyone, I've set Ratty straight, no need to worry.  But you're right, IT'S APPALLING the way that he treated his clothes!  Try not to break out in hives like I did.

I just couldn't explain it enough. 

Me: Ratty, don't hang your $600 suit on a hanger you got from the dry cleaners.  FOR FREE.

Him: Why?

Me: Ugh.  JUST THROW THEM AWAY!  OKAY?!  THEY'RE HORRIBLE!

How is that not easy to understand?

We went through his entire closet, throwing away clothes he didn't want, and filling an entire garbage bag full of those items that can no longer be named.  I showed him how to correctly hang a pair of pants...

Me: You line up the seams...

Him: The what?

Me: The seams.

Him: Why?

Me: Ugh.

And then I showed him how to properly hang a dress shirt and explained that he needed to button the top button so it wouldn't slide off the hanger.  His entire closet was finally organized and pretty, and there were no things that could physically harm your or gouge your eye out.  Mission accomplished!

62. May 21st, 2011 Picture.

Saturday afternoon, Ratty and I headed down to Eddie and Christine's house for a little get together for Eddie's birthday.  My lil 'baby' brother turned 47 - isn't that just insane?  Eddie was 18 when I was born and honestly, sometimes I think we all still believe he is still that young.  Just ask him, HE can't even believe he is in his 40's, let alone his LATE 40s!

Abigail's dance recital was earlier in the day, so the plan was for us to go down around 4pm for some Chinese food and cake - sounds like a pretty awesome birthday if you ask me!  I mean, who doesn't love cake and Chinese food?  Nobody, that's who.

I spent the majority of the time outside running around with all the kiddos.  Eddie's yard, is absolutely massive, almost an entire acre, so as you can imagine intense games of kick ball, soccer, hide and seek and sometimes even a little dizzy bat tend to happen.

You can blame getting the kids hooked on dizzy bat totally on me.  They all think it is absolutely hilarious to watch each other spin around and then immediately fall down, grabbing at the grass trying to make the world stop spinning.  I mean, what isn't hilarious about that?!  I think it 100% stems from me teaching the kids at Cameron's party last year.  That infamous one where Ratty talked smack the entire time leading up to his turn, only to have him fail miserably and collapse in the driveway before he even completed his 10 spins around the bat.  This was also the time that Chloe screamed 'IN YOUR FACE', directly in Ratty's face, for a solid 5 minutes after.  Aren't kids SO cute?!

62. May 20th, 2011 Picture.

For my christening a few short years ago ::cough 28 years ago cough:: I received a number of savings bonds as gifts - when the government actually cared about its future.  I KID.  My mom kept those tucked away in safe keeping, until recently when she told me to cash them in.  I brought about 20 of them to my local bank and sat patiently while they calculated, recorded and processed all of them.  Before they took them all from me [seriously I had anxiety parting with them, I was all like 'but they're miiiiine!], I was able to snap of photo of one which said my name was Amy Catherine Deveau.

My middle name is Charlotte, a family name, which also belonged to my great aunt and my mother's only sister.  Initially, my mom and dad had planned to name me Amy Catherine, but at the last moment they had a change of heart and decided on Amy Charlotte instead.  No offense to the Catherine's of the world, but I like Charlotte better.

It was actually SO last minute that when the priest asked 'and what do you name your daughter?' and my mom replied Amy Charlotte, he literally said 'I thought it was Amy Catherine?!'  So there is an adorable Deveau story for you, I'm glad I was able to snap a picture before having to hand it over!  I am sure the lady at the bank thought I was crazy, but these are MEMORIES!  We have to savor them!

62. May 19th, 2011 Picture.

This photo was VERY topical at the time, but judging from the fact that we are all still here, on earth, very much living, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that this whole 'Rapture' thing isn't at the top of everyone's minds anymore.  Am I right?

Well anyway, for those who are still somewhat interested, these vans were driven around Boston for weeks leading up to May 21st, which coincidentally is also Eddie's birthday, so had the Rapture really occurred, it would have really put a damper on celebrating.

I remember how convinced some people were that this whole end of the world thing was actually going to happen [Full disclosure: I did not.  At no point did I drink the proverbial, maybe literal kool aid and think the Rapture was real, but I digress].  Some did.  So much so they drove these Winni's around Boston while we all scoffed at them.  But I mean, I'm still scoffing!

62. May 18th, 2011.

These pictures are absolutely horrible because 1) I was in a moving car 2) I was the one driving said moving car and 3) traffic was absolutely insane because the President was speaking in the South End.  YES, that President.  Of the United States.  You know, POTUS.


I took a small detour on my commute home so I could drive by Cyclorama, a function space right in the heart of the South End, where Mr. Prez was speaking.  I cannot remember for the life of me what Obama was there to talk about, but I am sure it was important.  I'm SURE of it. 


I honestly tried really hard to get some good snap shots of the people outside, cops on patrol and those freaky rapture folks that were protesting the entire thing - I mean, whyyy waste your last days protesting a government that you don't believe will exist in like, 48 hours.  Seriously, go on vacation.  Sleep in.  Have some glasses of champagne.  Max out ALL your credit cards on awesome stuff.  That's what I'd do.  


ANYWAY, enough rambles, I circled the block TWICE attempting to get a picture, but it was so chaotic that this is all I could come up with.  So, don't judge.  K, thanks.  KISSES!

I think you might be able to see the faint bright yellow of all the police jackets and all the break lights, which was obviously the traffic and chaos I was dealing with.  Don't worry, I had pulled over at this point to take the picture.  Don't ever say I don't work hard for this blog!

62. May 17th, 2011 Picture.

So obviously this post seemed more exciting in May than it does in October, but I think bonfires in general are all sorts of awesome, any time of year.  You know, except when it's snowing.  Or too cold to be outside.  Or when it gets dark at 3:30pm.  Which on average is about 7 months out of the year in Boston.  Sigh.  Anyway, I was flipping through a Martha Stewart magazine and there was a whole feature article about bonfires and I had to take a picture.  I honestly dream of having a house one day with a big back yard in which will OBVIOUSLY have a fire pit, obviously.  I also sometimes like to take that dream up a notch and say that I'll have a house near a beach and be able to have awesome bonfires on said beach.  Because it would be my own private beach, naturally.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  You're all invited. We'll make s'mores.

62. May 16th, 2011 Picture.

I could have sworn that I'd already written about this, but once I combed through my previous posts, I realized that I must have just imagined it.  This picture is one of my all time favorite photos ever, and it was taken by the extremely talented Edward Fetter, aka my brother.  Eddie went to MassArt and got his Masters in Photography from the San Fransisco Art Institute [we all went out for 11 days when he graduated, pretty sweet family trip!].  


I had been asking Eddie for this print for a little while, I'm being generous, I'm pretty sure it was YEARS, and he finally gave me this a few years ago for my birthday.  FINALLY!  I absolutely love it and it has hung prominently on each bedroom wall in my multiple apartments.  Those adorable little feet belong to Miss Cassie, when she was just a wee lass.  She is walking on rocks at the Big Eddy in New Hampshire and holding her mom Christine's hand.  I mean honestly, let's be real, Christine is the ONLY one I know that could look that great after having a baby.  Hell, I'd love to look that great right now!  I secretly hate her for it.  Kidding, I love her.  But she does look great, dammit.

But seriously, can we look at Cassie's little feet?  She was the most adorablest little girl ever, and I just love her so much!  It's hard for me to imagine when she was this little, as she is NINE now, but I love looking at this picture and remembering just how sweet she was/still is!

62. May 15th, 2011 Picture.

Sometimes you just need a day where you do absolutely nothing.  May 15th was my day.  I took this picture because I literally sat in bed all day, watching TV and relaxing.  It was seriously so awesome.  Some might call it 'extreme laziness', but I think that everyone needs  an absolutely 'waste of space day' every once and a while.  I couldn't do this everyday, no absolutely not, I'd get far too bored, but once in a while is always nice.  Plus, my back started hurting from laying down all day.  Sigh, first world problems.

62. May 14th, 2011 Picture.

Saturday afternoon I decided to head into Boston for a little day drinking with Mark, Jamie and Dave.  Dave had a friend visiting from out of town, so he wanted to take her on a tour of Faneuil, which obviously included a few Scorpion Bowls at the Hong Kong followed by $1 drafts at Sissy's.  You know, the extremely important Boston landmarks.  

Including some kareoke from MahkG.

We hung out for a little bit before Dave had to head home and take care of his adorable little dog PJ, and Mark was his ride.  We kept trying to convince them to come back out and meet us someplace, but we knew our begging was futile.  Once someone heads home, no matter what time it is, it's really hard to convince them to come back out.  It didn't stop us from trying though, we kept begging AND texting, until we finally accepted the fact that both were gone for good.  Well for this night at least.

We decided that the absolute best place for us to go would be The Banshee.  I've talked about it a few times on here before, and it always is a really fun time.  We always say we're going to go for a 'few beers', but somehow insanity always ensues.  Not that we're complaining, of course...

Here is us having to say goodbye to Mark and Dave.  How is it that Mark doesn't look sad?  YOU SHOULD BE SAD!

We made our way to The Banshee where we met a group of guys who were carrying around this framed statue of the Blessed Mother, you know, for fun.  One of the guys, who I think was named Steak, told us that they found it in his Grandmother's basement and they decided to bring it out with them.  Obviously, it was totally for attention.  It worked.  It might seem like, uber sacrilegious, but it was also absolutely hilarious.  They'd start singing hymns at random and scold someone if they swore - 'not in front of Mary!'  They took really great care of her all night - she was the center of attention.  Obviously.  I'm pretty sure this is only something that could happen in Boston, either Southie or Dorchester specifically, where almost everyone is Catholic.

Me, Joe, Steak and Mary.

So yea, that happened.