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.

All we need is 2 wheels and an open road....

I don't know if y'all have heard about this, but apparently Lance Armstrong is making a comeback! I guess 7 Tours de France titles and countless hours in the saddle haven't satisfied his thirst for road biking.

Rob and I understand how he feels...
After doing a lot of research and debating back and forth, we purchased early Christmas (and birthday and Valentines Day and St Patricks Day and Yom Kippur) presents for ourselves: we bought road bikes!
After getting completely outfitted and broken in, Rob and I went on a more extended bike trip Saturday morning. We headed north from Cambridge, all of the way up the MinuteMan Bike Commuter path, then did a big loop to take in some beautiful scenery, a cranberry bog, and Great Brook Farm (where they make awesome icecream from their own cows). It was probably one of the best Saturdays we've had in Cambridge so far!
At the end of the trip we checked out our nifty cyclocomputers to see stats about our ride. We ended up logging 45 miles, with a total trip time of about 4 1/2 hours (including stops), and hit a top speed of 32 mph. The traffic-rebel, Rob, thought it was pretty cool that we were breaking the speed limit on our bikes. We finished tired but totally exhilarated and happy; biking is definitely a lot easier on the body than running and it's such a rush!
We're addicted. Too bad it doesn't look like we'll have much more time for biking before the cold, cold winter sets in. Maybe we should retire from this whole responsible adult/school/work stuff and give Lance a run for his money....

Holy Cannolis and St. Anthony

Once again, Brandon and Becca were kind enough to go along with one of my hair-brained schemes involving random "cultural" events happening around the greater Boston area. (I think the last major excursion involved a highly publicized pancake breakfast at a maple sugar farm.) But, they decided to give me the benefit of the doubt on this one, and accompanied Rob and me to the festival of St. Anthony in the North End.

St. Anthony, officially "St. Anthony of Padua (or Lisbon)," is the patron saint for lost things. Long ago, he lost his favorite prayer book--which had actually been stolen by a younger friar--then prayed for it to be returned. Shortly after the prayer, the thieving friar had a change of heart and returned the prayerbook. Nowadays, whenever those pesky car keys go missing, this common prayer can call St. Anthony to help, "Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost and cannot be found."

Here we are in front of the shrine to St. Anthony. It was littered with dollar bills, watches, rings, and other misplaced items. It was pretty neat; kind of like a holy lost-and-found.

After walking around the North End for awhile, enjoying all of the wonderful Italian culture, it was unanimously decided (Ok, everyone else actually got tired of me oggling all of the food) that we should stop so I could try my very first cannoli. Of course it had to be "Boston's Best Cannoli", so we went to a booth set up by Mike's Pastry to buy one. I wasn't expecting much...but...WOW. It was a fantasmic explosion of flavor in my mouth. Seriously A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Looking at that picture is making my mouth water.

And here we see that we can just leave it to Rob to make beautiful photographs out of a fresh produce stand on the street. I love it!

Before going back to Cambridge, we were all thoroughly entertained by a few thoroughly entertaining old Italian men rocking out to hits from the past 40 years.

More good times in Beantown.

So I married a... GOLFER! (who knew??)

After we got back from Brazil, Rob and I drove down to Myrtle Beach, SC for a week vacation with my family before Jacqueline went off to college.

Myrtle Beach has about 150 golf courses within 30 minutes of anywhere in the town, so it's pretty much a golfer's paradise. Rob took a golf class his last semester at BYU (over a year ago) just so he would be able to join my parents during golf vacations like this--and that's gotta be pretty much the definition of true love!

Anyway, when it came time to play we (of course) had no time to warm-up, but Rob totally rose to the challenge and we all had a blast! He's just a natural...I mean, look how good he looks holding that golf club!

And here's me being happy...and very cool...