Turkey!

Nikki and I drove down to NYC to visit my Aunt Bayla and cousin Christian for Thanksgiving. We carpooled with our friend Jeff who was visiting friends in Brooklyn. My Aunt has a great place in Jersey City and cooked a very tasty meal (who would have thought that brussel sprouts could be so delicious?). Not only is the interior of Aunt Bayla's place great (and well decorated!), but there's roof access where you can see New York, the Statue of Liberty, and of course the chromium dumps of Newark! After getting our bearings on the roof, we were off to the city to see if we could catch the end of the Macy's parade. We didn't see much of the parade, but Chris took us on a great tour of the city, including Union Square, the central post office, Madison Square Garden, the New York Public Library, FAO Schwartz, and plenty of cool windows on 6th ave. See Nikki doing the robot with the animatronics below! Feeling the x-mas mood, we went to check out the tree at Rockefeller Center too. While it definitely felt like the holidays in NY, mother nature must have missed the memo - we had a beautiful, warm day as we cruised around the city and thoroughly enjoyed the lack of heavy jackets. While we restrained Nikki from shopping madness on this trip, I think that we'll be returning to NY soon for a shopping/theatre trip! Maybe our good weather luck will continue?

Jesse's Visit

My brother Jesse was up in Boston this weekend for a water polo tournament (he goes to the Johns Hopkins). We got to take Jesse out for some candlepin bowling, around boston, and out for a couple meals. We went out with Jesse's team one night to a steak house outside of Boston with some pretty over the top cowboy decor. The best part were the fat cow statues out front - we have quite a few pictures with these. The best part of the trip, of course, was making fun of Jesse in a speedo...

Vermont and Montreal

On a long weekend Nikki and I decided to head north before it gets too cold. First, we drove to Vermont to add to our winter fat layers at the Ben and Jerrys factory. The factory tour was fun and since we were there during the week we got to see the machines running. We also got to hear about the new flavor: "Steven Colbert's Americone Dream." We stayed in Stowe, Vermont for the night and got to have a preview of what this ski town will look like in the winter.

Then it was off to Montreal. Wow, it really felt like we were in Europe! We got to see some sights, like the narrow streets of old montreal, the view from the top of Parc du Mont Royal, the "biodome," and the Olympic Park from the 1976 summer olympics, but the real attraction was the food! I don't know if I have ever eaten as well as here. We had awesome salads, sausages, "flamms" (like Pizza), venison, and of course - dessert!!! Pastries, fondue, some chocolate molten cake thing - wow! I have a feeling that we'll be heading back when things warm up....

Birthday!

This year we celebrated Nov 6 in great style - at a pub! For my (Evan's) birthday, we got a bunch of people together and headed down to our local bar for pub trivia, where you get to enter a team and compete with other bar goers by answering random trivia questions. We had two teams, one that got 4th place (Nikki's team) and one that got second to last place (Evan's team). We had a great turnout and I think everyone had a good time - thanks everyone for coming out!! (Jeff, I posted this picture because you are featured prominently in the center).

For lunch, I went out to lunch with two friends, Scott and David, for beers and all you can eat meat at Red Bones, which is near our house. I think my digestive system is still recovering....