Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Just wanted to share some photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was a wonderful Christmas spent with family and dear lifelong friends. Christmas Eve was at our house; we had a meat fondue this year, which was fun and involved everyone cooking their own meat. Sorry that Chris burnt his lip. Christmas Day was special at Mike & Elena's - Lindsey and Christian were there and it was a White Christmas at their house - Christian's first snow. The day passed by too fast as we all left early because we were afraid of the driving conditions.











Thursday, December 20, 2007



We met Jeff & Jenny to see their new home in Ballard. It has character. (I promised I'd let Jenny post inside photos first) They are in a really nice neighborhood with lots of nice quaint shops and restaurants. They treated us to Volterra's. We had a special treat of having their nephew Simon with us. I had wild boar, Joe had venison osso bucco, Jenny had a stuffed rabbit's leg, and Jeff had some kind of meat pasta dish.

Isn't Simon adorable at 1 1/2 years?








Simon getting ready to take a bite of the stuffed rabbit...










Joe and Simon






Rebekah & Simon's 1 1/2 month old baby brother, Levi

Sunday, December 16, 2007

My niece Lindsey is visiting family in Washington for 3 weeks from Hawaii. Her husband, Brian, is currently in Kuwait, on his way to Iraq for more than 1 year. They have a son Christian, and are expecting Kingston Allen in early April. Here are some photos from the shower held by her mom on Sunday, 12/16/07:

Fun, Food, Gifts, Games, Friends & Family







Saturday, December 08, 2007



This has been a crazy day for me. I woke up planning on cleaning house, etc. and ended up creating a funny card on jibjab.com after reading an article about it in this morning's paper. Then I went to the store and bought ingredients to make Santa hors d'hoeuvres and Reindeer cookies. Now I'm trying to figure out how to make a link to the crazy jibjab animated card for you all to see. http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/view/3MEY0s6P9TMhCqVXptfwWkoe Let's see if this works. Here are pictures of things Joe and I have created lately. You can see, we're a wee
bit nuts!

Sunday, December 02, 2007


Joe & I went to Machu Picchu, Peru in October (16 -24, 2007). It's one of the seven/eight Wonders of the World. It was really a neat & different experience. The Incas were incredible architects and business "trade" people for their time. The Spainards came and buried most of their temples. Sacsayhuaman (pronounced Saxy Woman) in Cusco, Peru was discovered in 1988, so I imagine there are more buried artifacts and Inca signs that haven't been discovered yet.


Their delicacies are guinea pig and alpaca steaks. Most homes are tiny with dirt floors, beds up against the walls and 50 guinea pigs running around making noise.





This is a photo from the same house above. Here the woman in preparing her fire for cooking. Note the beds against the wall in the above photo.







We flew from Seattle to Atlanta to Peru, and up to Cusco the following morning. The altitude in Cusco is 11.220 feet, yet there is no snow at that high level. The Andes Mountain ranges are higher still (with snow). When you arrive in Cusco you go to bed and drink tea made from coca leaves for the high altitude. It worked for us, we didn't get a headache.


Here we are at Machu Picchu - Keith, Cathy, Pat, & Joe. It was just the 4 of us with our own private tour guide; which was really wonderful. Boris (guide) is 36 and spoke very good english and was like a walking histoian.

Like the menu?












Boris said in his 14 years as a guide he'd never met an American tourist who ate the entire guinea pig - you guessed it; it was Joe!






One day we visted this salt mine and treacherously walked on the left hand side all the way down to the valley. Boris had explained that there was a path to walk on; he neglected to say that the path was actually about 6 inches wide and if you fell on either side you'd be in the salty water! I should have known better as he'd say a hike would last one hour and we always had to double the time frame. He was a great guide though.











The Incas built many archicultural terraces. In this way they could "climatize" their crops. The crops could be planted higher each year. In Peru there are over 3,000 varieties of potatoes.



Feeding alpacas; and to think I ate an alpaca steak!



The children and people are amazing. The kids run freely and I'm certain none of their homes are locked. We bought 4 grocery bags of bananas and oranges for $6.50 and handed out to the children as we were driving through fields on a Saturday. The children were tending to the family sheep, llamas, and alpacas.







Relaxing in the La Sauce Ollantaytambo hotel and playing Quiddler..








We spent the last day in Lima, the capital of Peru. Lima has a population of 9 million, while the entire country has a population of 27 million. There are 3 lanes for the cars, but there were about 7 cars moving forward across the 3 lanes, with vendors walking through traffic trying to sell you anything from bottled water to large hand carved boats - reminded me of Mexico, only much crazier.

The end..
Google Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley of Cusco, Sacsayhuaman, Pisac, Chinchero, and Ollantaytambo to see more amazing photos.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Turducken!
This year we ordered a cajun #15 turducken off of the internet. It was supposed to be a deboned chicken stuffed inside a deboned duck, stuffed into a partially deboned turkey. It looked great, cooked up great, and sliced great.... but, we were all a bit disappointed. 1. It was too spicy, and 2. the duck and chicken were ground together, so you couldn't actually get a slice of duck meat. Oh well, we tried. Next year we'll go back to our beloved deep fried turkey. We were 9 total:
Pascal & Christine (their last Thanksgiving in the USA), our dear neighbor Henri, Jenny & Jeff, Jocelyn (Pepperdine alum of Jenny's who now lives and works in Seattle) & her boyfriend Joey, Joe, and I.










Joceyln & Joey

Pascal, Christine, and their new 5 month old yorkie, Charly.

After dinner karaoke

and the day after Thanksgiving we put up our 1st ever artificial Christmas tree...

It's a good one, as Bob is under the tree just like every other year.

Favorite Photos