New blog....

This blog is no longer active. To see my new blog please use this link http://shebsboston.blogspot.com/

Thanks,
Katie 

Its the Jamaica Plain Bobsled Team

Unbeknownst to me, the restaurant I work for closes for a few days in Feb to do some renovations.  Upon hearing this news, I immediately booked myself a quick trip to Boston.  Needless to say it was a crazy four days!

I flew out on Sunday morning, after spending a whole week keeping an eye on the gale force winds expected here in Bermuda.  Somehow I managed to not notice the snow that was expected on my receiving end.  It was 16 degrees and snowing when I landed!  For a split second I did consider getting back on the plane and then I remember the magic of heated seats and was ready to head to Southie.

Sunday was spent catching up (while consuming 4 bottles of bubbly!) and meeting some new friends.  I got the chance to meet Lorna's parents in Ireland (who are awesome!) via a skype chat.  And as I promised them, here is the pic....

After that we had a skype chat with her brother who lives in Spain.  He was nice enough to put up with our drunken silliness even though it was 6am his time and he hadn't slept yet.  Oh, and then there was 1 more skype call made to Kelly in NY to guilt her into coming to see us.  I am still amazed that she did it, but the very next morning first thing she got in her VW and headed east to hang with us for a few days!

Thankfully Monday was a holiday so once Lorna and I finally rallied the three of us headed to the Seaport for some Monday Funday shenanigans.  We started at Jerry Remy's for the nachos (Lorna is pissed they no longer guarantee cheese on every chip, but they were still really good) and some good beer's that I can't get here.  We made a quick stop into 75, a cute little wine bar, on our way to Whiskey Priest.

This is where we peer pressured Kelly into doing shots so she could
catch up with us from the previous night.  We are such good friends!

We also had a special guest appearance from my friend Christine and her husband Andrew (who will appear later in this post, stay tuned!).  After that our bar tour of Boston continued to the Faneuil Hall area where more hijinxs occurred that I will not bore you with.

Tuesday Lorna had to get up and go to work so Kelly and I drove to Wrentham for some much needed retail therapy on  my part.  That night we all grabbed our passports and took a trip across the Mass Ave bridge to meet with with Christine and Andrew in Cambridge for dinner.  It actually took us 2 cabs to get there because the first one had no clue where he was going.  We went to an awesome restaurant called West Bridge and had some good food and yummy wine.  After dinner we went to a pub near by where they had the honor of having Lorna as a guest bartender...

Lorna filling our beers from the wrong side of the bar

Live entertainment was provided by Christine and some random guy who knew all the words to The Humpty Dance and Ice Ice Baby.

My last day was spent shopping and running errands, nothing too exciting.  Either way it was great to get off island for a few days and be able to hang with all my girls!

Xmas and NY in VA

Now that it is almost the second month of the year I decided to get my butt in gear and post my update from the end of 2012 (a year in which we are very happy to say goodbye to!).  For the past 6 years we have been going to my sisters for the holidays we had two big firsts this year.  The first being that we made it there and back with not a single travel issue at all.  All flights departed and arrived on the correct day and time with all of the luggage on the correct planes.  The second big thing was the length of our stay.  Because of my work we usually are only able to stay a few days and have to be back by NYE.  This year we stayed until the 3rd.  This gave us the chance to ring in 2013 with Krystyn and Jim for the first time ever!  Krystyn and I tried to think of the last time we did this and decided it had to have been long before she was in college.  

Ryan was waiting at the door for JM to walk in
 so he could jump  on him!

But I am getting ahead of myself here, so lets go back to Dec 22, the night we arrived.  The boys were still up waiting for us and were super excited to see us walk in the door.  Instead of going to bed we decided to open birthday presents (Krystyn, Philip and I all have bdays within a few weeks of xmas).  Philip got a counter top ice cream machine so he can play around with different dessert ideas he has.  The boys were excited because they got to help him make a few different things.  The first was Egg Nog ice cream that we ate and loved! 

we could not get over how big James is now!

Krys saved all of her gossip mags for me and
wrapped them up in a box as a gift!

Every year my sister has an open house and this year it was on the 23rd.  It was a great night and it gave us the to chance to meet some of their new friends who we will be going to the beach with this summer.  Everyone was nice and seemed to have a really good time.  Before the party started we had Xmas with dad (he leaves on Xmas Eve to go back to NY so doesn't get to open gift with us on Xmas morning).  The boys loved the Lacrosse sticks dad got for them.

Since I have started painting again I thought it would be a nice gift for dad.  I painted him a picture of a hibiscus which is a flower that blooms all over Bermuda in all different colors.  I am pretty pleased with how it turned out (I always think there is room for improvement)

Christmas Eve we introduced Philip to the game of basketball.  Ryan's team had a practice and at the end they played a game of knock out that they pulled Philip in on.  He did really good for someone who have never even bounced (what he called dribbling)  a ball before.  That night we had another night of wonderful food and wine with the Duggans.  Ryan really showed his sweeter side with the note he wrote for Elfie (their Elf on a Shelf) to take to Santa.....

Christmas morning started the same way it does every year (and the way I wish it would forever!) with the boys waking us up jumping up and down on our bed with excitement that Santa had come!  We all got way more gifts than we expected and had a great time opening them.  I love that this has become our family tradition.  When we lost mom, Christmas lost a lot of its magic in my eyes, but now that I have Philip and Krystyn's family to create our own memories and our own traditions and the magic is back! The day was spent relaxing in our PJ's and playing with all of our new swag.  another tradition that we have started is Philip and I making Christmas dinner.  This year, as every year, we made individual Beef Wellingtons, potatoes and veggies.  Philip is always in charge of dessert and this year he made us Banoffe Pie.  It was sooooo good!

Philip did a really good job this year with my gifts, I loved them all especially my new camera that I plan to use to take all sorts of pics to paint from.  

On the 28th we did an adult dinner out and the four of us went to Fat Canary in Williamsburg.  It was so good! If you ever have the chance to go there, I highly recommend it.  

Philip and Jim at dinner...Philip looks extra happy after
having a few Blood Orange Dark n Stormy's

The big gift we got for the boys was tickets for all of us to go and see the Harlem Globe Trotters on NYE day in Richmond.  Because Philip has never been there before we decided to take the day and go show him the sites of Richmond.  Our first stop was the University of Richmond which is were Krys and Jim met each other on the first day of law school and also subsequently got married!  Here they are 13 years later in the chaple they got married in....

From there we went to lunch at a little place were they used to go in between classes (on days that Jim did not go to the undergraduate cafeteria to see all the co-eds!).  On to the Globe Trotters we went where we all had a great time.  It was the first live basketball game Philip had ever been.  I explained that a lot of what they do is not actually legit in a real game so he should not get his hopes up if we get the chance to go to a Celtics game that Rondo will flip himself up on the rim and sit there deflecting balls!  That night we feasted on an amazing surf and turf that Krystyn made for us.  She and I had some bubbly while the boys drank of our there keg cups!  The glasses were made for men their size as they hold 3 beers at once in them!  3 mugs of 3 beers each later, Philip was in great spirits for ringing in 2013!  We played games while we waited for the countdown and then were surprised when fireworks started going off outside their house.  We went out and were even more surprsied that we were able to see them.  We watched for a little bit and then decided it was too cold and went back inside

The next few days were spent relaxing before we had to head back to the rock.  All in all it was the best trip ever!  I am already counting down the days until next year when we can do it all over again. Until then, we have the OBX in July!

I suck! (sorry Brianne!)

Well as we can see it has been a very long time since I have blogged and I received an email yesterday informing me of my lack of updates.  So for Brianne, who it seems is one loyal reader, this one is for you!

Needless to say a lot has happened since the end of August so I will do my best to only highlight the big things and do my best to keep them short and to the point.

It all started just a few days after my previous post when I went out after work and had a few drinks.  Because of that I left my bike in town (drunk driving is bad!) The next morning I went to get my bike on the way to work and as you can see from the picture below, my bike attacked me!  Its a long story but basically I got my foot caught between the kick stand and the kick start and it caused deep tissue damage.  My right ankle is still swollen!

If only that was the worst part of that week...but you'll hear more about that in a bit!  This happened just before Labor Day weekend and 2 days before Lorna came to visit again.  Not a great way to start her 4th trip to the island.  Thankfully since it was her 4th time we didn't have to do a whole bunch of touristy things. What we did do that was awesome was spend a day on Philip's brothers boat.  It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon and we made the most of it.  We went pretty much all the was around the island.  I could not think of a better way to spend the day.  After a long day out on the boat we thought it would be best to have a nice relaxing dinner at home with a lot of bottles of wine.  Sounds like a nice night, in theory.  And it was until.......

The Fire!  We were all sitting outside having dinner when I heard a noise (bear in mind I was still on crutches) so Philip went to investigate.  When he opened the door smoke billowed out.  That is really bad because we were in the front of the house and the kitchen is in the back.  He managed to fight his way through the smoke to see that our entire stove was up in flames.  It was a freak accident because we hadn't even used the stove, we were grilling outside.  There was a cutting board left on the top of the stove and it some how ignited and the whole thing went up.  Philip tried his best to put the fire out but I ended up having to call 911 and having the firetrucks come. We were very lucky in that nothing else caught fire.  It didn't spread and it was out out quickly.  The only problem was the entire house was full of smoke, so everything was covered in soot.  It has now been almost 5 months and we are still finding soot in random places!  We ended up having to move out for 2 weeks so the place could be cleaned and painted.  In the midst of it, there was a category 3 hurricane heading for the island! Thankfully it lost speed and it veered away from us. All in all it was an ordeal I hope to never have to go through again!

So that takes us to October which was a quiet month, thankfully!  One big thing did happen in October though, after a 15 year hiatus I have started painting again!

Philip got me a shopping spree of art supplies for our anniversary this year and I am happy to say I have put it to good use.  I did these 3 paintings for Kelly and Ed for their kitchen.  All 3 were of actual pictures Kelly posted of veggies she had grown in their garden.  I think for my first try after a long time off they came out pretty good.  I am doing a lot more painting now that I have so much free time (yup, that's what we call for shadowing!)

Then in November we took a trip to Boston for a long weekend and what a trip it was!  We went with friends we have made here on the island (actually they are our Bermuda family now!).  Kelly and Ed drove in from NY to spend the weekend with us.  Lorna gave up her whole weekend to hang with us as well so it was an awesome time!  We did so much.  Our first stop was to Solas so Philip could start the trip with his favorite beer that he can not get here on the island.

As I said we did a lot of stuff including: The Script concert, mani/pedis, James Bond movie in IMAX, Target, tailgating for Sunday Football, Chinese food and maybe some drinking as well!  

November concluded with Philip turning 45!  Because I love birthdays so much and think that everyone should I wanted his birthday to be fun.  We decided to do murder mystery dinner with a Wild West theme.  It was a blast!

Dirk and Penny

Lynn and David really got into character!

Everyone dressed up and played their parts so well.  We would love to do it again sometime for sure.  

We made the mistake of thinking all of the bad parts of 2012 were behind us (injury and fire seemed like enough!) but we were wrong.  The week before Philip's birthday I was let go from my job.  Of course there is no good time of year for this, but in my opinion this time of year is the worst!

So I am making the most of my free time as I said before.  I have been doing more painting, I have a list of project around the house that I want to get done, plus we have Christmas!  I am very excited that we will be heading to VA for a full 10 days this year!  Look out Reid family, the Butlers are coming to stay! 

Oh, I forgot one thing, last night was my birthday!!!!!  Philip planned an awesome dinner with a few close friends.  It was perfect!  Plus I didn't have to worry about having to get up for work this morning, so bonus!

Philip keeping it classy with the brown bag in the park before dinner!

Thank you to Brie for he kick in the butt I needed to get everyone up to speed on my life!  I will do my best to try and stay on top of things a little more so no falls behind.  (On a side note, most of this has been on Facebook and even my Dad is on there now.  It may be time for you to breakdown and join Brie!)

If you do not hear from me between now and then, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Here's hoping 2013 treats us better then 2012 did! 

This one is for my mom



This is moms Sr pic from High School

This week marks the anniversary of the biggest loss of not only mine, but a number of peoples lives.  This week marks for me the anniversary of having lived half of my life without my mom.
 

1  of my fav pics of mom and I ,
we were both so happy! (Gotta love the perm!)

In thinking about writing this post I have spent a lot of time thinking of all of the things I have done that my mom has not been here to see...I have graduated from both High School and College (which meant a lot to her and she would have been very proud of), I have dated many boys (some of which she would have liked, some of which I think I would have

mom, Krystyn and I on vacation
 I am guessing in Conn.

broken up with sooner had she been here to put me straight!), I married a wonderful man (who I know she would have approved of and I wish everyday had the chance to know each other), I have moved many many times, including twice to Bermuda where she picked to go on her honeymoon.  I have traveled to places she never got to go, I have seen and done things in the 16 years since she left us that she would have loved to do with me or at the very least to hear about, I have had the joy of watching my sister do many of these things as well, and I have had the added bonus of becoming an aunt to 2 boys she would have loved with all her heart.  I have remained friends with many of the same people she loved (some as much as she loved us) and I have made new friends, most of which she would approve and 1 or 2 she would have loved! I have walked thousands of miles in her name to try and defeat what took her away from us (as well as one of her BFFs, Nancy Norton) and I am doing what I can to make sure she is not forgotten. 



The 3 of us the last Xmas we got to spend with mom,
only 4 months before she was diagnosed

 My intention in writing this blog is not be make it sad or depressing because that was not how mom lived her life, as is evident by the picture of the 2 of us above.  My intention is to remind everyone who was lucky enough to know her how great our loss still is, but also to introduce all of the people in my life who I met along the way that never got the chance to know her.  I know it is an easy thing to say my mom was an amazing woman, but in this case it is actually true. You could say that mom walked to the beat of her own drum, but not in a bad way!  She was fun.  She made up her own songs and dance moves, she had funny sayings that no one else really knew where they came from but still knew what she meant when she said them!   To this day I find myself still saying some of these things and then having to explain to whomever I said it to where it has come from.  If it is someone who knew mom then I tend to get a sad smile of remembrance from them, if it is someone who didn't know her, the reaction is typically one of confusion.  After all, how do you put into words the feeling that you get when you think about someone so special and all of the ways they touched your life.  There are no words that do it justice (I get the irony of that statement and the purpose of this post!)



The Shebanies when mom and dad renewed their
wedding vows ontheir 25th anniv.  This was only 2 months before mom died.



I don't want to dwell on the time that she was sick (as it was only really 4 months of her 46 years of life) except to talk about this picture.  Everyone who knew her knew how much she hated to have her picture taken.  This is the last family picture of the 4 of us and I cherish it.  Mom and dad had been  married for 25 years, as a celebration of that wonderful accomplishment they decided to renew their vows in the church they had been married in 25 years earlier.  This was on Saturday June 21st, 1996.  The day before I had my 2nd attempt at my road test to get my license.  My appointment was after mom's doctor appointment so I drove her there and then we went to the DMV in Poughkeepsie.  I could tell when we left the doctor something wasn't right but she insisted all was well and that she was just nervous for me.  We went to my test and I passed!  Once we got back in the car she started to cry and silly me, I thought she was so happy that I had passed.  As it turned out she had been told that morning that the cancer had spread.  She didn't want to tell me before I took my test because she didn't want to upset me.  Again, the point of this is not to be sad, it is to say look at that picture and how happy she is.  She is holding hands with the love of her life and surrounded by her 2 girls and all of her friends and family.  This was the happiest day we all shared that summer.  Little did we know 2 months later we would be at the same church with the same young priest (this was his first wedding and then mom's was his first funeral) to say goodbye to her.  Even if we did know what was coming, I don;t think any of us would have chnaged a thing about that night.  In a word it was amazing 





Mom and I at my first prom when I was a freshamn,
 she didn't get to see me go to my own proms



Of course we all struggled in our new life without mom and I have had many people commend me on how I handled that at such a young age.  The thing is it never occured to me to do otherwise.  I guess I could have very easily turned to drugs or criminal activity or I could have done a crappy job at school and no one would wonder where it came from.  But as a true testiment to what a wonderful job mom did raising me, the only thing I thought to do was go forward.  One of the best complimets anyone can give me is to say mom would be proud of me.

 

So as this week comes and goes and as the years flash by us, thank you for taking the time to read this and remember with me what an awesome person my mom was...afterall, we only get 1 mom and I was lucky to get this one, even if the time I spent with her was way too short!  

 

miss you mom xoxo    

BDA->PHL->VA->OBX!!!! it was a worth it!

So I just noticed that it has been an entire month since my last post and I do apologize, I suck!  Now that I have a real job that does not allow me to sit around play games and update my blog all day, this has suffered.  Lucky for you I have since been off island and have many wonderful (ie- hilarious, embarrassing, stupid, etc...) tales to share. 

I began my journey on Thursday, July 19th with not only 1, but 2 delayed flights!  I was late getting off the island and then really late getting out of Philly.  Thankfully I have an awesome brother-in-law who it seems always get stuck with picking me up when my flights are delayed (big shout out to Big Jim!!) oh, he always gets the even better job of getting me to the airport for the ridiculously early flights back here (but maybe by then he is ready to get rid of me!)

This vacation started for me as they all should moving forward.  My sis and I had Friday to ourselves to go get mani/pedis a nice lunch and then massages!  We did a little shopping as well, we needed to ensure we had enough supplies to get us through the week....

6 boxes of wine...check! very large bag of popcorn...check!

For more than half my life now (for serious!) my family has been going to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  It has been with different families and different house over the years, but for the past few years it has been the same crew of 24 (14 adults, 10 kids) in the same house, The Bella Donna Del Sol and for us it is one week of paradise.


our home away from home for the last week of July every year

This year we decided that rather than sit in house of traffic on Saturday to get to the house, we went Friday night and stayed in a hotel.  The kids were able to swim and Krystyn and I went on an adventure of our own trying to find pizza for everyone for dinner.  It would have all been great had we been able to get into the house on Saturday early like we did the year before.  As it worked out we were not able to get in until 4pm.  We had a whole bunch of unhappy kids which resulted in some grumpy (and a few hung over) grown ups.  But finally at 4 we were in and vacation had officially started!

The week involves a lot of fun activities and  many trips between the pool, the beach and the cooler for beers.  One of the newest activities is the Speedo Run for the men...this year they were each offered $50 to run down the the beach together and "frolic" in the ocean.  They did so and it resulted in a round of cheers from the many appreciative onlookers on the beach. 

We also have the opportunity to celebrate some half birthdays while we are there, any excuse for ice cream cake works for me!

Is Madison checking Jamesy out????

We  had a wonderful fireworks display (which was way better then the 4th of July one I saw here in BDA) thanks to Brendan! I also got a chance to eat so much food that I am not able to get here so I went all out and ate everything in sight, the extra pounds are totally worth it. 

This year we started a new tradition...The Ricky's!  They were awards given out at the end of the week in honor of Rick who we were forced to say goodbye to way too early and miss greatly.  With categories like "SandBarTender" given to Ryan for the number of times he swam out to the sandbar and back and "Face Off" to James for accidentally hitting Jen in the face with a football, it made for a very fun evening.

most of the kids waiting for the Ricky's to start

After spending  months counting down the days until the trip, the week ended up going by way too fast.  I would say it was a perfect week, except there was 1 really important person who was not able to join us, Philip.  He was missed by everyone. 

As anyone who knows me knows that no trip home would be complete without a couple hundred dollars spent at Target.  Krys was able to get me there on Saturday before I flew out on Sunday.  This resulted in me having 5 bags on the way back here (including a suitcase borrowed from Krys because I didn't have enough space).  At $90 per bag for overweight bags I had my fingers crossed when they were put on the scale and of course they were both overweight.  Thankfully I was lucky enough to either have a very nice or very mathematically challenged woman check me in because somehow I did not pay for either bag.  

So now I am back here on the rock missing everyone and looking forward to seeing them all again next summer.  In the meant time I have already started the count down to Christmas in VA when I can see my family and have another amazing week with them.

This one is for Eileen, my number 1 fan!

So it seems this fancy little blog of mine has gone international, and by that I do not just mean Bermuda or North America. I have a fan in Ireland! It may have something to do the fact that one of the staring people in a lot of my posts is the daughter of this person or (and this is what I like to think) she has very discerning taste and knows good writing when she reads it!  Either way, this one is for Eileen Carton!

I know I have been very bad about updates and for that I apologize.  Now that I have a job that I actually have to do work, my time for writing posts has been very limited.  Since we are talking about my job, I am still very much in love with it.  I am still learning a lot, and still have A LOT to learn.  But it is keeping me busy and happy all at once.  It is hard to believe I have been here almost three months already.  For those of you keeping track and who believe in karma, you will be happy to know that my former boss (yes the one who called me fat) has been suspended from his current job.

 

So what else has been going on?  Well….I finally got a big girl bike! This means I also had to get a big girl license.  Here is a picture of my new “tweet” ride.  It is a Peugeot Tweet, hence the play on words (oh I am funny today!) This is a much bigger and way more powerful bike than my last one, which makes me love it even more!

The other big thing was Chuy (Eileen you know her as your first born, Lorna) came for her third visit, which means that she officially has her own room at my house now.  Sorry to everyone who has only been once, or not at all, you will now need to book any stays through Chuy in order to sleep in her bed.  Otherwise, we do have a very nice couch or an air mattress that deflates as the night goes on, you are welcome to sleep on either of those.

This was the first time I was able to go pick her up at the airport on the new bike (it was only 3 days old by then.)  Little did Chuy know I had never had anyone ride on the back of the bike before and was very nervous that I was going to kill the both of us.  I am happy to say we did just fine and both made it through the weekend unscathed (with only 1 close call of us crashing, but I kept my cool and we were fine…nothing to worry about Eileen!)

As usual we had way too much fun and perhaps one too many drinks.  Based on the amount of time spent on the couch on Sunday, I am scared to say, but I think we may be getting old! 

Eileen, I hope this blog has lived up to the others.  I also wanted to personally invite you to come and see us here in Bermuda.  Lorna tells us that you and your husband would love it here, so if she is ok with it, you are more than welcome to come and stay in her room.  I would love to finally meet you!  Thanks again for being my #1 fan!!