Happy One Year

We are still in love! Hooray!

Happy Twelve Days to Christmas!

We're currently contemplating never leaving our apartment again. The tons of snow we had dumped on us last week has now transformed into an all-consuming slush. Every time we've taken the car out (only three times) in the past few days it has almost gotten stuck. Stressful.

On a more happy note, we have our first Christmas tree! Tori was giddily excited by the prospect of having any kind of tree, while Henry just didn't get it. This one was pre-lit, pre-decorated, on sale, and about a foot tall! A mini-tree for our mini-studio. We managed to squish some of our ornaments on it... so now it's a bit crowded, but hey, we like it!

To end this long-awaited (by my MANY readers...) blog post, I'm going to share some of my favorite Christmas/winter songs! While I always love the traditional, religious songs, I also like to add some variety in there sometimes.

Here they are (youtube links):
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm
Come on, Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!
Donde Esta Santa Claus?

the daily grind

So in the last month we've just been settling in to our daily routines:
5am: Alarm goes off ("Gold Digger" ringtone). Snooze. Wake-up. Shower etc. H makes T lunch.

6am: T catches bus to SLC and reads books, H goes back to sleep or starts work.
8-5pm-ish: T works, sacks (sacrifices) mice, finds out how nicotine affects the immune system and how it can affect developing babies. H works, goes to school, learns about measure theory and dynamic programming and other hard math.
6:30pm - bedtime: chill, eat, cuddle, etc. (service to the poor, putting together humanitarian aid kits, cleaning the wounds of lepers, and giving blood)
SLEEP

rinse. repeat.

Here are some things that H and T have been enjoying lately:
1. Trying to become ventriloquists, which really just involves avoiding words with letters like "m" and "b", etc.
2. Autotune the news. Seriously funny. Especially if you are familiar with T Pain, Kanye, etc. There are about 8 videos, but our favorite is found here.
3. Chocolate. This is a regular for T, actually....
4. New phone! H got a fancy phone with a whole QWERTY keyboard on it... too bad he doesn't have texting.
5. Wonderful conference!
6. Spending time with family. Kids are entertaining. Take for example, our 3-year-old niece who wants to be naked Dumbledore (time 1:18 here) for Halloween. She has a natural aversion to wearing clothes. We attribute it to the fact that she is actually Tarzan.
7. Trying to play D&D with H's old roommate (meathead, and wife). T was an elven druid named Valanthia or "Val". H was a barbarian named Grognak.
8. Indian food in all its forms. Bombay House and/or homemade. If you have any recipes you'd recommend send them our way.
9. Lots of books. Our nifty goodreads sidebars can testify to that.
10. Hayao Miyazaki films. So good. Kiki's Delivery Service and Porco Rosso are our most recent favorites.

That's it. Come say hello if you are in town.

vay-cay

So after our internships in DC finished we went on a whirlwind vacation to NYC and Boston. We also spent about 20 hours on various bus rides ... not too fun, but worth it for the price!

Here we are in Central Park. Most of our pictures are "arm shots" - ya know, where you stick out your arm and take the picture yourself (I'm pretty good at them actually) - but this one was taken by a kind stranger (you'll notice both of my arms are visible):
NYSE, baby. Doesn't Henry just look so happy?
Ground Zero. Seeing the former site of the WTC up-close made us realize how scary it must have been when the buildings came crashing down 8 years ago. Everything is so close together in Manhattan that it must have been a nightmare to be anywhere in the vicinity.

View of the Statue of Liberty, the sun, and some other tourists from the Staten Island Ferry:
I don't remember why Henry is whistling or singing or something, but he sure is cute doing it:
This is my artsy shot of my not well-manicured foot, a fence, and the fuzzy Manhattan skyline in the distance:
Enjoying sunset from Staten Island! It was cool to see the city light up as the sun went down:
This was from one of the exhibitions at the Met (I can't remember what it's called...). It's an ancient Egyptian temple, and I found it amusing that there is also not-so-ancient graffiti on it:
Tori in chocolate heaven:
We then boarded a bus to Boston and stayed with some good friends of ours, Malia and David, who graciously let us sleep in their living room and share their toothbrushes (...they don't know that...). We had a delicious calzone and then a cannoli (one each, of course). I definitely felt that for a while.
Wow! The Old North Church:
Napping in Boston Common:
Taking the ferry to Martha's Vineyard. This is my all-natural hair, by the way, a nice wavy mess:
The safety (?) sign on the ferry... still not exactly sure what that's supposed to mean. It sure didn't make us feel any safer:
We rented bikes and rode all around the island. It was a nice sunny day and we didn't wear any sunscreen (we just love skin cancer) - I paid for it that night when I got delayed sunsickness and re-experienced dinner... But anyway, MV was consistently beautiful: the houses, the ocean, the lighthouse, the flowers, EVERYTHING. We would definitely rent/buy a home there someday if we make it big with one of our movie ideas. Beautiful park and eccentric architecture:
HPT is proud to present.... THE OCEAN!!
And how could we go to Martha's Vineyard without remembering the Obama's (who were vacationing with us.... or on the island at the same time)?!? Of course chocolate and ice cream is the best way to celebrate anything, especially if the food 1) is accompanied by a nice detailed diagram of the contents, 2)is available for a reasonable price that reflects the number of the president (44th), and 3) has a name could possibly be taken as an extremely politically incorrect racist comment: