It's pretty hard to decide where to begin after such a long absence in blogging. I've decided to focus on positive events that are upcoming in Gibbsland and let the writing sort of floooow from there.

In three weeks we will be traveling!!!! Yay! We're going to Sweden (my fourth trip for me) and then to Iceland. Even though we have three weeks before departure, there's so much to do. Recently we've been replenishing our summer wardrobes (I have a fall birthday and Keith has a winter birthday which means our summer clothing is frequently lacking), making final arrangements, deciding what things we want to do. Iceland is pretty much set, but we need to be more organized with relation to our Stockholm plans. At any rate, its been a loong time since we've been able to go away for more a long weekend (5 days to get married in 2005, a one week cruise in 2004, and a two week vacation in 2000). This is long overdue.

Tomorrow is Commencement at Harvard University which means while students are milling about, graduates are preparing to graduate and proud parents are looking on, the staff is officially going into downswing mode. I'm making plans for organization projects so that next year is especially smoothly executed. I also plan to mill around the University and get information about opportunities here at Harvard. As a bonus to the staff, Harvard Business School is throwing a community barbecue on Friday and then giving us the afternoon off. All right!

Keith has been pretty busy with work, making sure he has his hours. This week and for the next few weeks he is taking on additional work for his company to revamp their website. They will pay him his hourly rate for the hours he racks up. That's good, because vacations to Sweden are expensive!

A lot of the reason I haven't had time to blog is finishing up the course I took this past spring. I don't have my final grade yet, but I hope that will show up shortly in my mailbox. One complaint I have about the school is that I have no way of knowing if there's a way for me to check my grades online--at BU, this was centrally located under their employee link. I did, however, get an A- on the final paper which is worth 30% of my grade! So that's good. Unfortunately, my other two small papers earned grades of B- each. I was able to improve for the final paper by asking Professor Freeland for some additional information for what he was looking for in the paper...that information paid off very well!

A key frustration of the spring was that my last "free" weekend before final paper mayhem began was that I came down with another cold. The next three weekends were gorgeous, but alas, I was stuck inside writing papers. The first weekend following the end of the class was miserable and rainy, the next weekend was Memorial Day weekend and we were out of town, and this past weekend was also overcast and drizzly. It looks like I will be breaking the cycle this upcoming weekend. The weather is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous!

Traveling to Lancaster for Memorial Day weekend was fun and it was good to see Keith's family as well as my Nonni, all of whom we hadn't seen since Christmas. However, traveling is always exhausting and that isn't going to change anytime soon since we want to settle here. I have no clue what we are going to do when we have small children. None whatsoever.

Hopefully as the date of departure draws near we will be able to keep you updated with all the excite and some of the fun activities that are ahead of us (including a game at Fenway on June 15th!)