Matt and I have been married for one year! We had discussed what to do to celebrate our very first anniversary... Our friends had suggested fancy restaurants or booking a weekend in some high falutin' hotel. But most of those ideas just seemed to fall flat for Matt and I. The truth is: we just aren't classy people. High-end stuff just comes off as stuffy and pretentious. So we had decided to drop by our favorite (or rather ONLY) tiki theme restaurant and to attend the annual Magic of Lanterns festival at the botanical gardens. It had been raining most of the day, but the sky cleared up just long enough for us to stroll fancy-free through the magical glowing wonderland. I couldn't of asked for a more perfect night...The air was warm, the rain had stopped, and we practically had the entire garden to ourselves. As we walked hand-in-hand, I felt as if I was glowing as brightly as the colorful lanterns that lit the path under our rhyming footsteps.

Room to grow

Weekend trips outside the city are pretty rare for me. Usually by the time the weekend has arrived, Matt and I are ready to hit the city streets in search of some undiscovered excitement. But this last weekend was a welcome break from the norm: my friend Julie invited us along with her twin sister to spend Labor Day weekend at her parent's home in the country. Or more specifically, to attend the Brome County Fair...with barn animals, cotton candy, carnies and all. There really is nothing more down-home than a county fair...Though, those types of events are geared toward children with little or no fear of being killed on shoddy looking carnival rides or eating questionable looking "food-on-a-stick". So, we spent our time petting horse heads and squealing at the little piggies in the hay. After a thorough day of getting animal residue on our hands, we took the secret dirt road to Julie's childhood home.

Julie's parents own a lovely piece of land surrounded by a beautiful, fern covered forest. Just up the road you could see the hills and mountains in the distance. Picturesque beauty...the kind of setting that you might imagine a fairy tale about a little farm girl or magical pig. Places like that let my imagination roam...I could see my younger self hiding in the woods, building forts and pretending to play with fairies in the ferns. Part of me wanted to be left alone there, free to indulge in the beauty around me. The forest brings me some kind of comfort...just sitting there, listening to the wind blow across the canopy. The air itself seems to have some miraculous healing attribute. I wished that I had my camera to photograph the moment, even though the act would lack any ability to capture what I was feeling.

The evening was spent outside on the back porch with Julie's family, huddled around an open fire. That night Matt roasted a marshmallow on a twig for the very first time. Julie and I nodded with approval as we allowed the city boy to participate in us country folk's holiest of rituals.