2013: The year of the unwritten blog post.

I don’t know where the year went, but here we are, in glorious 2014, and I realize, thinking back, that we actually kinda got around this past year. Nothing like 2011-2012, but hey, you can’t always have the (travel) year of your life. I’m not complaining, but I do miss the days when blogging was our full time job.

This past year involved a lot of US travel, some of it afforded by unexpected furlough time off for me, as well as a big Switzerland/Italy trip for my mom’s 70th birthday that took us to possibly my new favorite place in Europe. I meant to write about all these adventures, but alas, this recap will have to do!

We started 2013 off by celebrating the new year with best friends in New Mexico, where we stalked Breaking Bad sites and stuffed our faces with ‘New Mex’ food in Albuquerque and then tried to burn it off on the slopes skiing in Taos. We hope to be back in that part of the world this spring, when Yael and Curtis welcome their first baby girl!

February involved a trip to NYC to see Nick’s uncle who was visiting from Israel, and then a local skiing weekend at Snowshoe in West Virginia with friends that turned out almost as much fresh powder as our Taos weekend. Not wanting to push our luck any further with two amazing skiing trips under our belts, I began to think about sun. March took me to Palm Springs for my dear friend Chris’ bachelorette party, where we ate citrus fruits off the trees and pretended we were in Mad Men.

April rolled around, and I had my mind set on making lemonade (a SCUBA diving trip) out of lemons (forced furlough days). And we all know… when I set my mind on a trip, it is going to happen, come hell or high water. I brought little more than a bathing suit, my PADI card and my mom, and spent a week diving off the world’s second largest barrier reef in Roatán, off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Added bonus: it matched my furlough budget perfectly and the diving was some of the best I’ve ever done.

In May we celebrated our second wedding anniversary with a laid back weekend at Deep Creek Lake, in western Maryland, and then got ready for our big vacation in June! I first went to Switzerland to see my uncle and cousins whom I had not seen in years, and then Nick and I spent an absolutely amazing 11 days in Sardinia (Italy) with my mom and cousin, followed by a date weekend in Rome. I’ve said it before, but really, make Sardinia your next European vacation.

We try not to make a habit out of letting more than a year go by without checking out a music festival, so July brought us and our music fiend friend Kelly to Newport, Rhode Island, for the Newport Folk Festival. While I am not a huge folk fan, I loved the laid back vibe of the weekend, the awesome setting on the water, biking around the area, and of course, all the fried delicious Rhode Island seafood at Flo’s Clam Shack. Seeing Black Prairie, Beck, Bombino, and The Lumineers wasn’t too shabby either. We’ll be back for more, that’s for sure.

Since we didn’t make the annual family reunion in upstate New York over July 4th weekend, we packed up the car and left for a long weekend to join Nick’s dad’s family in Sylvan Beach (on Lake Oneida near Syracuse) in August. Gin and tonics, fire pits, sunset photos, beach croquet and an upstate New York culinary specialty called “salt potatoes” made for a fun and relaxing long weekend with the Violi clan.

September brought me to East Hampton, New York for another amazing bachelorette weekend full of lawn games, delicious food and tons of laughs to celebrate my college roommate Joyce. Joyce, if you’re reading this, don’t forget about my offer to housesit that gorgeous Long Island South Fork house of yours anytime!

I love east coast fall more than anything. But before we totally let go of summer, we spent the last weekend of September in Southern Maryland, a place that’s special to us because we were married there in 2011, and also because Chesapeake Bay crabs, hello! We camped and canoed in Point Lookout State Park, which was a Confederate POW camp during the Civil War; 4000 of its 50,000 prisoners supposedly died there. Prisoner ghosts aside, it’s a lovely and serene gem of a place at the southern tip of Maryland’s Western Shore, and it’s also one of the launches for the ferry to tiny Smith Island, an eroding island with a population of less than 300. There’s not much to do here, other than eat soft shell crabs at one of two restaurants, grab a slice of the famous Smith Island Cake, and bike between the two towns. We rounded out the weekend with a wine tasting at Woodlawn Farm, where we got married and hadn’t been since!

October brought an unexpected trip to Chicago for me. The government shut down had me at home way too much, trying to avoid the relentless rain and the constant news feed that only seemed to indicate I definitely had enough time to take a last minute trip somewhere before those goons on the Hill got their acts together. The Windy City has been on my list for a long time, and I was lucky enough to make it there just a few weeks before my friends Jeff, Aimee, and their 5-month old daughter moved away, so I had lovely hosts to boot.

October and November took us to NYC two times, first to spend time with our close friends and their baby girl, and then for my friend Joyce’s wedding, which was a fantastic college reunion. Between those two, we squeezed in a trip to Austin to visit our friends Amy and Ben, eat tacos, hit up a music festival, and eat more tacos. We were successful on all fronts!

Thanksgiving through Christmas is all about family, and we do it up right. Nick’s family in Boston throws a superb Thanksgiving get together, and three weeks later we reunite again at his grandparents’ house in Manhattan, this time complete with a white elephant gift exchange and plenty of rounds of Coffee Pot and Celebrity. No reunion tee-shirts, no drama, just straight up fun!

And that (phew!) brings us to the end of the year, which Nick and I spent in adorable Asheville, North Carolina. I cannot speak highly enough of this town and our time there; it deserves its own post. All in all, a wonderful end to an awesome year! Already pumped about where 2014 will bring us…