Ann Arbor Bucket List

With my love of lists, it should be no surprise that I made one for our new city. Here are 20 things I'd like to do/eat/see in the next year while living in the city!

• Attend a football game at The Big House
• See a midnight movie at The State Theater
• Eat cider and donuts at Dexter Cider Mill
• See a movie/show at The Michigan Theater
• Date night at Room Breakout
• See a comedy show at Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase
• Eat at Mark's Carts
• Walk the Diag/around U of M's campus
• Eat at Zingerman's Deli
• Ice skate at Yost Arena
• Attend a U of M hockey game
• Visit the Kerrytown Farmers Market
• Eat pizza at the original Cottage Inn
• Visit Zingerman's Bakehouse
• Eat Hippie Hash at Fleetwood Diner
• Order Insomnia cookies
• Eat crab legs at Weber's
• Visit all AA area breweries (6 of them as of 09/16)
• Attend the Ann Arbor Art Fair
• Kayak on the Huron River

What's New With You | August

Linking up here

August was a big month for us and since I slacked on Weekend Recaps/posting in general I figured this would be a good place to dump it all :)

We spent the first week of the month in Grand Rapids. Spending as much time as we could with friends and visiting all of our favorite places. It's been almost a month now and we still miss it...

We moved to Ann Arbor on the 6th. We spent the next two weeks unpacking, purging, and setting up the apartment. It was not easy going from a huge house (even if we did have roommates) to a small two bedroom apartment. UGH!

I celebrated my 26th birthday on August 7th! We went out to lunch at Mongolian BBQ with friends and then my family came in town to visit and we had dinner at Zingerman's Roadhouse. My grandparents also brought an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins and it was delicious!

We explored our new city a few times and even enjoyed a bar crawl with our friends' family.

And the biggest event of all; I started my first job as a SLP! It has been exciting, overwhelming, exhausting, and nerve-wracking. I met my middle school and high school students this week and next week I'll meet my preschoolers and elementary students.

Traverse City Ale Trail | Brewery Terra Firma

The next stop on the TC Ale Trail was Brewery Terra Firma, which is Michigan's first agricultural brewery. The boys ordered a flight of 8 beers here and were blown away. They couldn't stop talking about these beers for days! They said that the beers tasted so fresh and you could really taste the different ingredients. When you pull up you can see the hops growing behind the building and then for the rest of their ingredients they use local. This brewery also hosts Vinyl nights and has an entire room floor to ceiling with vinyl records, which would be awesome.

Midweek Ramblings + Purchases

Ramblings:
TV Shows: Just like everyone else we got sucked into Stranger Things and finished the series in a weekend. What should we binge watch next? The Night Of finale kind of irritated me, but I still hope that they make a second season. I'm also still wondering why Stone's feet played such a big role... I can't believe that Pretty Little Liars is ending next season! After a few mediocre seasons I feel like we're finally getting good episodes/story lines. Of course.
Clinical Fellowship: These first couple of weeks are exhausting y'all! I feel like my mind is going a hundred miles a minute and that I look like a deer in the headlights 90% of the time. It's hard creating a therapy schedule when you don't know your students personalities and whether or not they'll mesh well with other students. It's hard figuring out TieNet and Medicaid billing and all of the procedures. ALL of it is hard. But I know that eventually it'll get better. Eventually. In the meantime, thank God for a 4 day weekend this week! PS- How adorable is my speech board?!
September: How on Earth is tomorrow September? I refuse to believe that summer is almost over, because that means winter is coming and I hate winter. HATE it! This is one of the reasons I can't hop on the #OMGfall train.

Purchases:

Converse Shoreline Sneakers: I received these as a birthday present and I'm obsessed. I had to size up due to my whacky feet and I wouldn't wear them for long periods of activity, but I love them none-the-less. Now I need to figure out how to keep them white.

Console table: We finally received and put together our final piece of furniture for the apartment! Since we don't have (or want) a coffee table/ottoman we needed something on the other end of the couch to place cups, etc. on. Of course Target saved the day and we love it!

Midweek Ramblings + Purchases

Ramblings
CF-SLP: My first SLP job has officially started! Monday was our first day and while it's overwhelming I think it's going well! I have a great team and they've been a huge help. The kiddos come back tomorrow, but I won't start providing therapy until late next week. The rest of this week will be spent decorating my therapy room (pictured above) and hopefully figuring out my schedule. Keep your fingers crossed that I'll get my work laptop & iPad ASAP as that's making things a bit difficult!
Apartment: Aside for waiting on one piece of furniture and decorating we're all unpacked and settled in the apartment! What a relief! That doesn't mean we're completely organized yet, but we're getting there. I'll share some pictures soon :) I can't tell you how awesome it is being on our own, for first time in 3 years!, even if it's in a semi-cramped apartment.
MI Weather: The insane heat and humidity has finally broke, which means the weather has been gorgeous this week! Duke has finally been able to go for walks again and loved all the attention he got at the trail today. I'm still not quite ready for fall though...

Purchases
With August being my birthday month, moving month, and the month that I started a new job I've done quite a bit of shopping! A few favorites have been..

Tieks: As a "congrats on your first big girl job" I bought myself a pair of Tieks! I'm obsessed with them and now I want to buy multiple pairs, especially the Fuchsia ones ;)

Planners: I've always been a paper planner girl and have used Erin Condren planners for over 5 years now so it shouldn't be a surprise that I purchased a teacher planner now that I'm a school-based SLP! I figured I mine-as-well purchase my personal 2017 planner while I was at it. Those are the two designs I went with and I can't wait to receive them!

Weekend Recap | Low Key in Ann Arbor

Long time, no update. Life has been pretty crazy, but we are finally settled in Ann Arbor and enjoyed a semi-relaxing weekend!

You know you're getting old when your idea of a great Friday night is laying in bed with your dog reading.

On Saturday we helped my brother move into his new apartment. Imagine how we felt when we came across one of his new neighbors walking through the parking lot with a PET boa constrictor! I'm not even sure that is legal...

Saturday night we did a pub crawl in Ann Arbor with our friends and their family. We had a great time and checked out a few places we hadn't been to yet.

 Late Sunday morning we had lunch at Grizzly Peak Brewing Company.

I wrapped up Sunday getting the office and some materials in order, because today is my first day as a Speech-Language Pathologist! I'm anxious, excited, and terrified. Here goes nothing :)

Traverse City Ale Trail | Right Brain Brewery

I mentioned in our camping trip recap that the first day we had an ambitious goal of completing the TC Ale Trail in one evening. We were determined! This "trail" is comprised of 8 breweries in Traverse City. Unfortunately they're pretty spread out (one is 25 minutes up the peninsula!) and since we were doing it on a weeknight a few locations closed at 10pm. These two factors really put us on a time constraint, but like I said, we were determined and it paid off! With only minutes to spare we completed it :)

Our first stop was Right Brain Brewery. Right brain is the perfect name for this brewery, because it is weird! More of a warehouse with random, strange art everywhere. There were a few games to play, but we didn't have time to hang out. Not to mention there's a hair salon right next door with glass walls... They also sell a tank that says "beer bitch" if that suits your fancy ;) All of this to say that it was still a cool place and it'd be a great place for ! Everyone ordered a beer and we split a cheese board appetizer before heading to the next stop.