The MLK Snow Bowl

It wasn't quite as big as the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the AllState Sugar Bowl, or the Chick-fil-a Bowl (although, how do you take yourself seriously when you are the playing in the Chik-fil-a Bowl??) ...but this past Monday, a few lucky men in Cambridge participated in the 1st annual MLK Snow Bowl.

Christian Robinson, Lane Morgan, Ben Beasley, Rob Ellis, and Kyle Leingang took a break from studying the law to gather on Cambridge Common for a hardcore game of snow football.

Luckily, the field was coated in a blanket of snow a few feet deep, so the fresh powder made each tackle a little less painful.
After every play the guys were completely covered in snow. Rob would hit the ground and come up with snow sticking to his little goatee, turning it totally white. Cute...like a young, skinny Santa...

Team 3L (Christian and Lane) were pretty fierce competitors.

Team 2L (Rob, Kyle, Ben) huddle-ing up. Kyle played with both sides as all time QB.

This is serious business; Rob, during a water break, is strategizing how to mount Team 2L's comeback.

After about 3 hours, the SnowBowl came to a close. Cambridge Common's field of untouched snow was totally trampled and the guys were all pretty beat...especially Team 2L. :)

Hello...Anyone out there?

Not that I deserve to have anyone out there, when I only manage to post once a month....but in an effort to rustle up some positive inertia to help me get blogging again, I wanted to share something that made me laugh last night.

*Disclaimer: Allegedly this is from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I haven’t been able to confirm it, which makes me think it might not be true…but I still laughed out loud.

Jay Leno went into the audience to find the most embarrassing first date that a woman ever had. The winner described her worst first date experience.

She said it was midwinter....Snowing and quite cold... and her date had taken her skiing in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah for the day...

They were complete strangers, and had never met before. The outing was fun but relatively uneventful until they were headed home late that afternoon.

They were driving back down the mountain, when she gradually began to realize that she should not have had that extra latte. They were in the middle of nowhere, about an hour away from anywhere with a rest room! Her companion suggested she try to hold it, which she did for a while.

Unfortunately, because of the heavy snow and slow going, there came a point where she told him that he had better stop and let her go beside the road, or she would lose it in the front seat of his car.

They stopped and she quickly crawled out beside the car, yanked her pants down and started. In the deep snow she didn't have good footing, so she let her butt rest against the rear fender to steady herself. Her companion stood on the side of the car watching for traffic, being a real gentleman and not peeking. The feeling of relief she felt overwhelmed even the obviously embarrassing nature of the situation.

Upon finishing however, she soon became aware of another sensation. As she bent to pull up her pants, the young lady discovered her buttocks were firmly glued against the car's fender. Thoughts of tongues frozen to poles immediately came to mind as she attempted to disengage her flesh from the icy metal. It was quickly apparent that she had a brand new problem.

Horrified by her plight and yet aware of the humor of the moment, she answered her date's concerns about “what is taking so long” with a reply that indeed, she was “freezing her butt off” and in need of some assistance! He came around the car as she tried to cover herself with her sweater and then, as she looked imploringly into his eyes, he burst out laughing. She got the giggles too and when they finally managed to compose themselves, they assessed her dilemma. Obviously, as hysterical as the situation was, they also were faced with a real problem.

Both agreed it would take something hot to free her chilly cheeks from the grip of the icy metal. Thinking about what had gotten her into the predicament in the first place, both quickly realized that there was only one way to get her free. So, as she looked the other way, her first time date proceeded to unzip his pants and pee her butt off the fender.

Oh and how did the first date turn out? He became her husband and was sitting next to her on the Leno show.

First Snow of the 2008 Season

I think Cambridge winters have something against people trying to get out of town for Christmas. This time last year we were hit with a huge blizzard the day before our trip to Brazil. And this year, a few days before Christmas....

Luckily, this year we were just driving down to Connecticut for Christmas so we didn't get too stressed about travel when the snow started coming down. In fact, I was especially not stressed because my work was canceled on the first day of the storm so I got a surprise long weekend!

So while the greater Boston area was blanketed under about a foot (ish) of snow and sad people were waiting for hours and hours for the flights to get out of the airport, I stepped out my front door and went snowshoeing.
But....now I'm ready for spring to come. :)

Deep Fried Turkey.....mmmmmm

Every year we swap Thanksgiving and Christmas with each of our families. This year was the Ellis' turn for Thanksgiving, so 5 of the 9 siblings gathered at Joy's house in Austin for feasting and fun.
Rob and I flew in Thanksgiving morning (and we were very thankful for JetBlue and direct flights from Boston to Austin) and were welcomed by the smells of a smorgasbord of delectable delicacies that Joy had been preparing all morning. Then we got right to work helping her finish dinner preparations for her houseful of 18 people.

Because Joy only has one oven and because we were making about 10 other side dishes, Joy and Darrell decided to borrow their friend's deep fryer for the turkey. Rob got to be Darrell's turkey-fryer sidekick and has now vowed that he will be in charge of all future Thanskgiving turkeys as long as he can use one also.
And I have to say, I am absolutely converted to the idea; our fried turkey came out incredibly moist and delicious...and we were glad to eat it for 2 (or 3) meals a day until we left on Sunday.

Joy and Darrell also happen to have the coolest backyard ever, that includes a trampoline, a huge fort/jungle-gym, soccer goals, and even a 9-hole putt putt golf course! We were all out there trying to beat the course record that stands at 16. Although we had flashes of brilliance, neither of us even came close.
In the end, it was great to spend a few days with family we don't see nearly as often as we would like. We are so thankful for our wonderful families and although we don't have a putt putt golfcourse in our backyard (in fact, we don't even have a backyard) if anyone wants to get together before the summer, we do have a spare bedroom here in Boston! :)

If you are in need of a little inspiration....

Click Here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAjZ8mfoYw

Alas Poor Edith!

I guess Rob and I have a Halloween tradition (a whopping 2 years running) of carving a pumpkin, naming it, then putting it outside our door for the season.

Last year we got to enjoy Ed, our pumpkin, for a good long time. He and I developed quite a relationship. He was a smiling face to come home to every night, someone to greet me at the door at the end of a long day. Eventually he started getting very tired (read: he was getting so droopy that his features no longer looked like a face) so we had a ceremonial funeral, complete with eulogy, to help us put an end to the relationship. Good ol' Ed...makes me tear up just thinking about him!


This Halloween season was on track to produce another lasting friendship.

Rob and I were invited to a pumpkin carving party at a friend's house so we went and picked out a pumpkin with character (character=warts in this case)....

We carved and carved, working to really bring to light our pumpkin's true soul.

Eventually, Edith emerged (She is the witch-pumpkin with a wart on her nose at the center of the picture). Edith was a great Halloween pumpkin. I was so excited to get to know her...

So we put her on our stoop. She would wish us well on our way to work every morning and was a great companion for me when I was waiting for Rob to get home in the evening. She and I were getting very close; sharing our innermost thoughts, fears, and dreams.

(This is a picture of all of the finished pumpkins at the party...Edith is the menacing-looking one, 3rd from the right)

Then one evening--only 2 days after Halloween--Rob was going outside to meet some friends on the street. I heard him open the door, heard him take a few steps, heard him mutter "Oh Crap!" then heard a dull smash. My heart sank and I knew a something terrible had happened.

HE KICKED EDITH DOWN THE STAIRS! I ran outside and found her smashed to smithereens on the pavement....All of a sudden a budding friendship had been destroyed.

I guess sometimes life is just hard. But we do our best every day... and resolve that next year we're investing in some good quality, stainless steel, pumpkin armor.

Oh Canada and Peep Leafing

A few weekends ago a group of friends rented a lake house in VT on the border (literally) of Canada and Lake Champlain. Although the forecast predicted rain all weekend, Rob and I didn't want to miss out on any fun so we drove through heavy rain (and Friday afternoon traffic) and made it to the house late Friday evening.

Saturday morning we woke up to this awesome view of Lake Champlain :

Although the weather looked a little threatening, Rob and I decided to do some early morning exploring. We walked to the end of our driveway, looked to our right and saw the U.S./Canada border! There were security stations for each country, but we thought we could bypass the system...
It gives new meaning to the phrase "hopping the border," right? (yuk, yuk, yuk)

After we got yelled at by border patrol (really) we came home and a group of us headed over to the Adirondack Mountains for a hike. The weather held up and we drove through some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen. It is so beautiful here in the fall...if the season just wasn't so short and wasn't followed by such a long, brutal winter, I would be totally up for living in New England permanently!

Later, our friends rented a speed boat and the crazy boys went waterskiing (apparently there's a man-rule that says : If there is a lake, a real man must ski regardless of the water temperature). :) In the evening we made s'mores around a campfire before falling asleep, completely exhausted. The next morning we stopped at a nice little branch in VT for church and did some more peep leafing on the drive back to Cambridge.