Wow. I really had no idea how great our trip to Vermont and Boston would be. I guess there is something about my family that I should explain that might help you understand how amazing it was. Picture Daryl and I, growing up in Tahoe (California), with our entire extended family back east in Vermont. Our family has always just been the four of us. We have less than ten family members in Vermont, and we would see grandparents and cousins every couple of years growing up. There were no family reunions, no big family celebrations of any kind, and actually since my brother and I started traveling abroad, we haven't even made it out east to visit (I know, sad).
That being said, Gump (my grandfather on my dad's side (name coined by Daryl when he was probably two)) remarried several years ago to a quite amazing woman who decided to organize a "family get-together" while we were in VT. People literally came out of the woodworks for this! (Not everyone lives in VT). We actually met members of the Nourse family whom we had never met before, not to mention that we saw people we hadn't seen in over 10 years. My grandpa's brother and his kids and their kids were there, plus some of Pat's (step-grandma) kids, and the fact that Daryl and Nate and I, and even my mom had come from the West coast, made it a huge bummer that my dad hadn't also planned to come. But how were we to know we would be having the first family reunion to speak of on the Nourse side of the family? Even my grandparents on my mom's side were there. Everyone was there, in the same place.
I know a lot of you have big families and are used to tons of family members, but this is NOT the Nourse family. I feel like I'm struggling to describe feeling like I've discovered "long lost" family members at this point in my life. I only wish we had gotten to know them a long time ago. I have always longed to have more family members, I've even sought out "cousins" of my grandma in England. And I claim my German sister (Lydia) and her family as my German family, and my host family in Costa Rica as my Costa Rican family. That's all well and good, but there is definitely a difference when family's last name is also Nourse.
When I am with Nate and his family, it is so amazing to see how everyone loves to get together and they all get along so well and you can just feel how happy people are to be in the presence of family. I have loved becoming part of this, but I have always wondered what it would be like to have a whole bunch of people around me who are (in a way) just like me, we are all family, from the same place (to an extent). It was the first time I ever felt like I was in that position, with my family. Even with people I'd never met, I felt so comfortable with them; they are awesome people! There were a whopping 19 of us (that's inCREDible) in the same house, getting to know each other. Well, the West coasters were getting to know the East coasters at least.
NOW ON TO EVERYTHING ELSE
Ten, the number of breweries we visited. Yeah, seriously. We went to the first one and a girl there told us about the Vermont Brewery Challenge, well, guess we had a plan for the trip now (we succeeded, we all get t-shirts). There were a couple of good ones (Otter Creek in Middlebury was by far my favorite, and it was the first one...), but overall I think we all agreed that the beers out West are oh so much tastier.
We also had to go to the Ben & Jerry's Factory, as Daryl and I hadn't been there since we were at least in high school. The free taste of the day was something like Triple Caramel Chunk, oh my goodness. If it ever comes out, I will be participating in the consumption. We spent some time walking around Burlington too, somewhere I've been many many times in my life, but never as an adult. What a fun and pretty town that is. The walking street reminded me of Europe, I loved it.
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| Tribute to our old Ben & Jerry's photos |
Boston! We got to spend two days in Boston with a friend of mine and Daryl's from high school (shout out to Terry!) We ate overpriced (but delicious) Italian food, visited the Samuel Adams Brewery and Doyle's (fist pump), a famous old bar. We spent some time in Copley Square at the finish of the marathon. The memorial area was big, and growing by the day. After being in Boston and coming into contact with some locals, whoa, you messed with the wrong city. Have you ever met a Bostonian? Anyway, the highlight of our time in Boston was, of course, the RED SOX GAME! Or as Nate would say, the TWINS GAME! Yes, the Twins were in town, we got our tickets waaaay ahead of time and had awesome seats just behind the fence in right field. There was actually a Red Sox home run that was caught by a guy just in front of us. I even made it on TV :) The Red Sox beat the Twins 6-5 in the 10th, it was a very exciting game to attend in person, and so exciting to be at Fenway again.
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| Happy Birthday Nate! |
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| Daryl way left, Terry, and... Nate was getting a beer ;) |
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| Don't worry, they hadn't updated the score yet... |
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