Happy Birthdays!!

Today is a very exciting day. It's our adorable nephew Cedric's first birthday. Can hardly believe it was a year ago that we heard the exciting news and saw his first photo. We'll get to see him net Saturday. Can't wait.

Happy Birthday also today to our friend Edwin...who is more than one and less than thirty five.

AND Happy Birthday yesterday to my brother Mike! He turned 29. Next year will be the big 30!

This week was interesting, but very busy with work. There was a lunar eclipse Wednesday night and a snow storm yesterday. Both were really something special to see. Tried to get a photo of the eclipse. It came out a little blurry, so I found a better one online.

V-Day and the Opera

Hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's. We ended up cooking at home, eating delicious desserts from City Bakery, sipping some wine and watching LOST.

On Wednesday I had the treat of getting to go to see Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera. It was incredible. My first opera. Their voices, the sets, the horses, donkeys and dogs! The building at Lincoln Center is amazing too...a mid-century gem. I had heard there were subtitles for the performances, but I wasn't sure how that would be. Turns out it wasn't too distracting and it was nice to put the text with all of that emotion.

Can hardly believe it's Friday again! The weeks are flying by. Turns out my move for work will be one day before our flight to Europe, so I get an extra day off to pack and get things together. Might be a good day to check out some museum shows I've been meaning to check out.

His and Her Movies & last week

Went to the movies tonight with Aaron and Caitlin. The guys went to see Cloverfield, while the girls went to see Enchanted. Two very different movies set in NYC. We came out of the movie smiling and laughing (it was a very cute movie) while the guys had been slightly traumatized by the shaking camera and the giant city destroying monster.

Yesterday we took Max and Meisje to the vet for a checkup. It had been a few years. The good news, Max has lost 4 pounds (he was 22 and is now 18) and Meisje gained 1 pound (6 to 7). The slightly bad news, Max needs to get his teeth cleaned in the near future. It was sad to hear them desperately meow in their carriers on the way to and from the vet. Thankfully, they are once again back to their usual ways, sitting beside me on the couch.

Didn't have a chance to write about this last week, but the Giants winning the superbowl was pretty amazing. Great game, great night with friends. After they won, we could hear cheers and screams out the window from people in other apartments and on balconies. It was magical to hear everyone celebrating at the same time. It was also the first football game I have ever really followed and I was surprisingly not bored. Erik baked these adorable cookies for the game.

While I am always looking up from our street to see the latest construction next door, I had never noticed the carved faces above the windows of the other building next door. They are lovely...and I am a little embarrassed it took me 4 years to see them!

a very brooklyn day

In an effort to get to know more of the city, and to check out neighborhoods we might want to move to in the future, we took a little trip deeper into Brooklyn today to Ditmas Park. A unique area with lovely victorian homes and very suburban sidewalks separated by grass along tree lined streets. Erik took these pics of our adventure.

Rainy, rainy day

It has poured rain the entire day. Why couldn't this be snow? If it had been, today would have been an amazing (possibly office closing) blizzard. Come on old man winter, January was kind of weak, give us some real winter weather now that it's February.

Square Footage

Today we took a little trip to Long Island City and checked out some open houses for new condos. We, of course, can't afford these, but it is always fun to take a peak and do a little research. The 5SL condos had nice finishes, an easy commute, a gym, etc. While we are very happy on Huron Street, we know we will outgrow our first home eventually. Hearing about the square footage of the condos had us wondering about how big our little place is. Got out the measuring tape and pushed some furniture aside. Casa de Huron, it turns out, is 560 sq. ft with an extra 170 sq. ft for the deck. Small, but not tiny. Not sure what I thought it would be, but glad we took the time to find out.

GIANTS IN THE SUPERBOWL !!!!!!

WOAAA WHAT A GAME!!!! THE NEW YORK GIANTS IN THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!
It took an over time field goal but they made it !!!




As you can see the cats are also really exited about it :-)

Yeah!

slippery salmon

One of my new year's resolutions is to cook more at home. I had picked out a recipe tonight for ginger soy salmon and bought all of the ingredients at Whole Foods on my way home. Everything was going really well until I checked to see if the salmon was fully cooked. I pulled the tray out of the oven with one hand. I guess the angle was a little off (it was a big tray) because the slippery salmon steaks slid right back into the oven, all over the wire rack, the bottom of the oven and the floor. Yikes! What a smoky, stinky mess. Thankfully, there was not a fire and because of the incredibly warm weather here today, we were able to keep the door and windows open a few hours to clear the air. Our salmon dinner turned into thai takeout...chicken pad thai with spring rolls. Try making that at home!

Vrielinks & friends in town

From the 28th until the 3rd, Christa and Rein visited us in NYC. We celebrated a belated Xmas, checked out Dia:Beacon, saw two movies and rang in the new year on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a really fun trip. Dai:Beacon is an incredible art museum. The space is an old box printing factory. You can still see the ink stains on the wooden floors. They have a few Richard Serra sculptures there and I was amazed to find out how inspired and terrified I was to walk through them.

The holidays also brought Josephine, Isabelle and Nick back into town. It was really great to catch up with all of them in person and nice to hear all of their stories from Seattle and Paris.

First Post of 2008

Happy New Year! Here's hoping this year will be as fun-filled and interesting as the last.

Happy Birthday Uncle David too!

Texas Pics

Happy Birthday to Amke! We hope you had a wonderful day yesterday with family and friends. Wish we could have been there.

Writing from Texas

Hope everyone had a very lovely Christmas! We are having a fun and relaxing time here in Austin. Our flight down on the 24th was easy enough, no delays. Taking lots of pictures we'll post when we are back in NYC.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Just a few days until vacation. We've been busy getting all of the Christmas gifts together. I've tried to do most of my shopping after work to avoid the weekend crowds. Walking down Fifth Avenue in the 50s is like a combination of dodge ball and bumper cars. It's been difficult to resist buying a few gifts for ourselves as well. Erik's been talking about getting some kind of game system for a while, so on Sunday we went to the Sony store and Erik bought a Playstation hand held. He's having fun figuring out his new games.
Last week I was coming back from picking up some cupcakes with Charlotte at work when we saw 2 vintage school desks on the street! We dragged them back upstairs where they are now making a comfortable home.