Valentine's Day Weekend

Michael and I had a great first Valentine's Day as husband and wife. We started off the weekend at a delicious pizza dive on Friday night with our friends Josh and Mandi. Pizza places are all over the place in this part of New England, but you really have to search for spectacular ones. Josh and Mandi have lived here nearly 3 years now and know all the good local places. This pizza place is located in downtown Ipswich and is literally a renovated "house." It was small but crowded which is a sign of a good spot. They ONLY serve pizza; no salads, sandwiches or breadsticks. Only pizza with a variety of toppings. The crust was thin and each pizza was only $5...fantastic price for a student family!!Each person could eat their own pizza so needless to say, it was a pretty inexpensive dinner, but wow, very very good. We will definitely come here again. Well done, Riverview!

We followed dinner with an Xbox 360 Karaoke competition at the Warrens' which was fun, but not so much when they picked me to sing the popular and hard Italian song "That's Amore."

On Saturday, Michael and I enjoyed a walk and run around Beverly, and Michael created a fantastic dinner. He made lemon-rosemary salmon and a spinach, feta and mushroom rice pilaf. Wow, he's really turning into the chef! He amazed me with his creativity and tastiness. I am so blessed to have a handsome, talented and caring husband. It doesn't get much better than this!!

I hope you had a Valentine's day full of love, laughter and joy! And don't forget the Lord's love for us: unchangeable, unconditional and full of grace. He loved us first!

-LMB

Back to the Office

Hello, blog world. This is my first attempt to join the world of bloggers. I thought it was about time to do since Michael has been blogging for over 2 years now. He will probably still be the main blogger, but who knows, maybe I will end up really liking this!

For the past 1 1/2 years I have been working from home for my company based out of Charleston, SC where I used to live from 2005-2007. Shortly after moving up to Beverly, MA, I was asked to start working out of our Portsmouth, NH office. This has been quite a transition for Michael and I, especially because we only have one car and the commute is about 1 hour each way. However, there have been quite a few benefits of going back to the office, and I thought I would share them here.

First, I have loved being around people again. The human interaction has been awesome, especially since I work with such a great group of people. It is nice to be able to share jokes, stories, and help each other out without emailing or calling. Second, I walk and drive to work. I walk to my car, drive an hour and then walk 3 blocks to my office. This is much longer than my past commute from my bed to my desk, but I have enjoyed the fresh air and moving my legs outside more often. Third, I work in a stimulating and fun office. Like I mentioned, the group is fun, but also incredibly productive. There is hardly any negativity or gossip, and they love celebrations. For example, they made treats on my first day in the office, and we celebrated Valentine's Day on Friday with homeade valentines and homeade yummy treats. I can handle this!

So, even though Michael and I did not plan for me to start working in an office now, it's been a good change and one we trust the Lord in. I look forward to interacting with my fellow colleagues more and blessing them in any way the Lord allows!

-LMB

Take your husband to work day

It's a cold Wednesday afternoon here in New England, following a long day for me of shoveling out Gordon-Conwell from yet another few inches of snow we got yesterday. After a day like yesterday I needed to get away from campus for a while, so Lynn decided to take me to work with her. Well, not exactly... but I did go to Portsmouth with her.

Since we moved up here nearly a month ago now, Lynn has been driving up to work out of the Arcadia office in Portsmouth, NH. After making the commute for about a week or so, Lynn told me Portsmouth was like a mix between Charleston and Asheville. A glimpse of Heaven appeared to me when she made that intuitive comparison, and I knew it was time to make a visit. So, because I didn't have class or work today, I decided to head on up to Portsmouth with Lynn. I have been studying at a coffee shop called Popovers this afternoon and Lynn and I ate at a place called Me and Ollie's Honest Bread for lunch. There definitely seems to be a lot of local flavor up here, so I can see why Lynn compared it to those two Carolina towns.

Anyways, Lynn said in the summer (once everything thaws out up here) Portsmouth gets packed with tourists, and I can kind of see why. It's definitely a nice place to go if you don't want to deal with all the traffic and crowds in Boston. I'm thinking we have a new spot on the New England tour for anyone that comes up to visit us. I'm also thinking every Wednesday might start turning in to "take your husband to work day"... at least for the App Beahms.
-MAB

Buzzer Beaters

Since Lynn and I have been getting up around 6 to get her off to Portsmouth these past couple weeks, our nights have been ending earlier. We usually start winding down around 9:30, and nearly every night one of us ends up falling asleep on the couch. Unfortunately last night was one of those nights, and Lynn and I both fell asleep during halftime of the UNC - FSU game, which we both thought Carolina was running away with. Apparently FSU fought back after being down at the half, and it took some last second heroics from Lawson on a mid-sprint floater from three point range to get the W. Unbelievable. Hopefully we'll be seeing a picture like this one again in April?

Lawson's buzzer beater was only one of two amazing finishes last night in the ACC though, with Wake pulling off the upset of #1 Duke on a pretty in-bounds play that left four Duke players standing around wondering what just happened. I mention this game for my dad who teaches in the MBA program at Wake and is a big Deac fan.

Well, hopefully everyone was able to catch these exciting ACC finishes or see the highlights from Wednesday night. It was definitely a great night for College Basketball... or at least Wake & Carolina fans. I'm pretty sure Lynn and I will be pushing our bed time back from now on as well.

-MAB

Honeymoon in Rivieria Maya, Mexico

I thought I would go ahead and put a post up about the honeymoon for anyone that hasn't heard from us directly about how amazing it was. I've edited an email for the blog that I sent to our AAA travel agent who helped me plan the trip that summarizes our experience at El Dorado Royale in Riveria Maya, Mexico... Special thanks to my brother (as well as other travelers via www.tripadvisor.com) who helped me sort through the ridiculous amount of Honeymoon options out there, and helped me select a good one!

El Dorado Royale was wonderful. The resort is gourmet inclusive, so the food was delicious. No buffets that sit out in the sun and go bad... all food is made to order. 7+ different restaurants on the property including fondue, oriental, italian, mexican, and others. Each with 4 course options from soups, to salads, appetizers, entrees, desserts etc... that were all very unique, and very tasty. My wife and I felt like we were at 4-5 star American restaurants wherever we ate. We found ourselves talking about how great the food was more than anything else I think.

Second, the service at the resort really made the trip for us. All of the employees, from servers, to maids, to entertainment staff always had a smile on their face, and were very approachable. Sometimes they would just stop us to ask us about our trip, where we were from, etc... One morning, we were the only couple wanting to play Bocci, so two staff members from the resort were nice enough to play us... although we won in a landslide.

Finally, the resort itself was beautiful. Very well-kept, and no major issues with the room or anything. They had swim-up bars which were really cool. Lynn is not a big fan of mixed drinks... but I usually brought her a margarita anyways since it was all-inclusive, and ended up drinking mine and the rest of hers.

On the way down to Cancun we got bumped up to first class for free thanks to my wife's charm and a really cool steward on the plane. Definitely recommend this place to honeymooners to Cancun in the future. We loved it so much we actually never left the resort (partly because we were on a budget), but also because we just didn't see the need to. The only thing we paid extra for was jet skis for an afternoon because we both had always wanted to try it out.

Lynn and I have both talked about wanting to go back for an anniversary. We would definitely recommend it for anniversary and honeymoon trips... or just a very relaxing vacation!








-MAB

News & Record Wedding Announcement

My dad emailed the link below to me this morning. It's Lynn and my wedding announcement from the News & Record online. There's a great picture of Lynn in it (as seen on left) and also a brief description of our wedding, and the honeymoon that Lynn wrote up. Enjoy.

Oh yea, and isn't my bride stunning!

News & Record Wedding Announcement













-MAB

Wedding

It has been nearly three weeks since Lynn and I were married, and we are both loving many different aspects of married life so far. Primarily, I think we are both just enjoying living in the same place right now, as all of our dating relationship was spent long-distance. Anyways, now that Lynn and I are married, and all moved in to our new* (I've been living here since September) apartment in Beverly, MA, we had to change our blog which was formally titled "Pre-Beahms," since as Justin Lewis pointed out, we are now the "post-beahms" you could say. We wanted to be original in titling our blog and steer away from copying Chris and Melissa by using "The Beahms" again. I also wanted to avoid "Junior Beahms," "new Beahms," "Beahms the second" or anything of that nature to distinguish between us and our predecessors, Chris and Melissa Beahm. So based on our fan-hood and love for our Alma-Mateur, we settled on App Beahms.

We hope everyone had a wonderful time at the wedding, we certainly did! Thanks to our friends and family for doing so much at the wedding/reception and all the behind-the-scenes work that went in to preparing for our big day. We really appreciate everyone there! I have included a couple pictures from the reception that our friends took. We should be getting our professional shots back in a couple of weeks from Mr. Murray... but you may have to make a trip up to Boston to see those (which neither Lynn or I would mind very much)! There are also pics of our honeymoon and our apartment in Beverly that Lynn put up on Shutterfly which I will put a link to below if you haven't seem them yet.

Honeymoon in Mexico
Our First Home

Finally, I want to give mention here of our good friends Justin & Holly and the imminent arrival of Baby Lewis. I believe today is the due date for Holly, so the baby is bound to come any day now!! The App Beahms are very excited about this, and wish we could be down there in Winston-Salem to celebrate with you guys when she comes!



-MAB