A Riddle

I will post more pictures from Vermont but I don't want anyone's mind to go to mush while sitting in front of your computer staring at the beautiful sites of the green mountain state. So, here is a riddle to keep your brain agile, to keep your thinking cap on straight, and to test your skills of logical reasoning.

What do ice cream cones (with no ice cream), a AA battery, an empty Coke bottle, a barrette, and a sweet potato have in common?

I sure hope that one of you has an answer to this conundrum because I sure don't. This is the picture that I saw when I got home from school this afternoon at 5:00.

This tems were assembled on the end table next to the couch in the playroom.

Offspring No. 2 who has been in New York for the last week, has been home less than 24 hours. These items have appeared in this location since her arrival home. What was she thinking? Maybe she was reminiscing about her childhood, all those moments when imagination and creativity ruled her world.

Perhaps she was contemplating world peace or a time when all will see eye to eye. Perhaps her childhood friend,Mr. Potato Head, is becoming ethnically diverse and is now allowing potatoes of color into his circle of friends. Maybe this new friend is shy because he doesn't look like all of the other potatoes so he wanted a hat to hide his somewhat pointed head, hence the ice cream cones (with no ice cream). The barrette may be a sign of optimism that this poor sweet potato believes that soon he/she will have hair; you know the hair that potatoes grow when they sit in the vegetable bin or on the couch too long. Why the Coke? Maybe the sweet potato told his starchy white potato friends that if they soaked their hair in Coke they could be just like him/her - orange and sweet. And the battery? I don't even want to know who promised who what!

I'm just not sure how the social underpinnings of potatoes work. We'll see how this picture plays itself out.

If any of you have any insight into this scenario, please feel free to enlighten me.

How Did We Get To Stone Hill Inn?

1. Though both Weber and I travelled a fair amount during our first marriages, neither of us had a honeymoon.
DECISION: We would definitely have a honeymoon.

2. We wanted to go someplace that neither of us had been before. Had to be somewhere in the continental U.S. because we are responsible for and had to be easily available to the Offspring. We both preferred mountains to beaches. We have both been to the mountains in the western part of the U.S.
DECISION: East coast mountains.

3. The Poconos and Niagara Falls are too cheesy for us. I've been to North Carolina and Virginia. The farther north, the cooler. (At least that was the fiction at the time we were making this decision.)
DECISION: Vermont

4. Once we settled on Vermont, we did what every educated person does when they are looking for information. We Googled "honeymoon spots in Vermont."
DECISION: Stowe

5. We then Googled "where to stay in Stowe, Vermont"
DECISION: Stone Hill Inn

This process led us to an amazing, luxurious, romantic inn nestled in the mountains of the quaint town of Stowe. The inn advertises that it is for couples only and all of its amenities are designed so that the two of you can truly enjoy each other's company.

Vermont is worthy of its name. Everything was lush and green. The wild flowers along the roadside were beautiful and the intentionally planted gardens were awesome. The inn was surrounded by both.

Here is our first impression.
Each of the inn's nine rooms is decorated differently though they have the same amenities. Each has a view of the gardens, a fireplace, a jacuzzi tub, a king sized bed, CD, TV, and DVD player.

We stayed in "The Fiddlehead"

The bath was huge and shared the two-sided fireplace. The tub came complete with a rubber duck as well as an assortment of herbal bath salts.

Each morning we had a gourmet breakfast at a candlelit table for two.

The meals consisted of fruit, homemade muffins and coffee cakes, a choice of entrees that ranged from Eggs Benedict to Waffles smothered in Vermont maple syrup. A piping hot carafe of coffee awaited us each morning. These morning feasts made it easy to get up and get going each day.

The inn was surrounded by beautiful gardens. Scattered throughout were pairs of chairs where we could sit and read, talk, listen, or nap. These were our favorites. This is where we read Morning Prayer each

day. Below is another picture of the gardens - and us. The inn keepers, Deb and Dana, were amazing. They were attentive without being intrusive. One evening when we were enjoying hors d'ouvres in the garden, Deb came out and said that she thought that she needed to take a picture of us together so that it didn't look like each of us had been on this trip alone. She took a few pictures, asked if we needed anything else and then left us to enjoy our food, drink, and each other.

We planned this whole trip using the Internet and gut feelings. Our experience at Stone Hill Inn far exceeded our expectations. It is nice when something is actually better in person than it appears on the Internet!

It is going to be hard for any place to beat our stay at the Stone Hill Inn!

Stay tuned for more from Vermont . . .

All In A Week

A little over a week ago I was concerned with things like punch bowls, flowers and the fact that I could not have a cookie or a handful of M&Ms every time I wanted to and still zip my wedding dress that was fitted a few months ago. I am happy to say that the punch found its way to a bowl, the flowers, which Erin requested be sunflowers mixed with the blue that Weber and I wanted, were perfect, and I had no problem zipping my dress! Here is the proof.

July 10, 2010

The girls were my attendants. They were beautiful. We each had a role - Brooke was the skinniest; Erin had the best hair; I was the happiest.


In the past week, I have forgotten about punch bowls, flowers, and whether or not my dress will zip. Weber and I are honeymooning in Vermont. We are staying at an amazing bed and breakfast, which I will tell you more about in a later post. For now suffice it to say that breakfast consists of more food than I had been eating in two days. We have been to the Ben and Jerry's factory. Yes, they give free samples and yes, I had a double dip of Imagine World Peace in addition to the free sample of Cookies and Cream. We went to the King Arthur Flour Baking School and Store. Samples? Yes. Free? No, but worth every penny spent on the chocolate croissant. Worth every calorie too since the dress doesn't matter anymore. Then there was the Cabot Cheese Creamery. Free samples there too! And let me not forget the samples of Vermont's best microbreweries that we have had every night with dinner. Fortunately it is my luggage they will weight at the airport and not me when we head home.

I said earlier that I no longer am concerned with flowers. That is not quite true. I no longer am worried about whether they are the proper color or if they are arranged correctly. Today, that is the responsibility of the Vermont countryside.

July 17, 2010

ADD, BTU's, and "I do."

Someone once explained ADD to me as the experience of watching TV with the channels changing every few seconds so that the world seems to be a collection of unrelated pictures where nothing makes sense. For the past two weeks, I have felt like I have been placed in an intentional state of ADD. As I have said before, I really don’t like multitasking. Unfortunately, being one with any single task lately has not been an option; too many things have needed my attention. Fortunately they are all things that I care about so I was able to put my notion that utopia means a linear progression through life aside and deal with all that has been going on.

The big accomplishment is that Weber and I were married yesterday in a beautiful service surrounded by all of our wonderful friends and family. More on this in a later post.

In addition to the last minute wedding plans, we have been making many decisions about the house remodeling, I am teaching summer school, and we still have the demands of daily life. The potential for disaster was great, but I am happy to say that disaster was averted.

We did not try to serve champagne from the lovely rubbed bronze shower spigot. (We are grown ups now! The days of bathtub punch are long over.)

I did not ask my class a test question that involved which tile would look best in our new kitchen.

I did not ask where the dimmer switch was for the unity candle.

I did not give the florist a Glidden paint sample as an example of the color of blue flowers we wanted.

We made it to church with the service bulletins rather than a stack of appliance manuals outlining cubic feet and BTU’s.

I did not respond to Paul’s (the contractor) question, “Do you really want to keep those glow in the dark stars on the ceiling?” with a heartfelt, “I do.”

Though 15 minutes before the wedding I was still wearing my Birkenstocks, I did not walk down the aisle in them even though this is summer and we can dress a little less professorily for class.

I did not make my class sight sing, “Love Divine, All love excelling.”

For those of you who know me well this is pretty impressive, huh!

My ADD adventure came to an end when I walked down the aisle and saw students, fellow parishioners, my Franciscan brothers and sisters, family and friends, and Weber. At that moment, I knew that all would be well . . .now, and for a long time to come.