leaving on a jet plane

this shouldn't surprise you but i am going home tomorrow!!! yeehaw. i am so excited. i need a break!anyway i will be home from the 19-jan. 3. so i hope to see some or all of you loved ones of mine. please call me. i will not really have much access to a car but i will try to do what i can. also, this weekend i saw a good movie called juno. go see it. it was good and sweet and funny. then end. see you all soon.

NYC

this shouldn't surprise you but we ventured to the big apple this last weekend. we had made plans back in august to meet mark's cousin and her family up there. ben decided to join us. we left work around 3 on friday and drove through horrendous traffic and finally made it to the hotel around 10. then we met up with our peeps, marilyn, steve, chris and daniel, and had a driving tour of the city. we saw 42nd street, times square, yankee stadium, broadway, central park, the east river, the guggenheim, moma, the mormon temple and other sights throughout town. then we went back to our hotel and fell exhausted into bed. the next morning we woke up and went to the train station (we stayed in secaucus, nj) and went into the city for breakfast at zabar's. yummy. then we went to battery park, saw lady liberty, hello lady.
there she is between our heads. (ps, mark makes fun of this hat.)

then we walked over to ground zero. it is amazing how big of a hole there is and what a huge construction site it is. it was surreal to see.

then we went to china town and little italy. holy hannah, there are so many people in new york. it is crazy. of course we bought some knockoffs and of course we had yummy italian food.
then we went to central park and looked around for awhile and we rested on this bench. here we are, me, marilyn, steve, ben, chris and daniel.

next we went to rockefeller center. again, so many people. i really wanted to see the ice skating ring but there were too many people crowding around so i saw the ice but there were no good photo ops. boo. the tree was fun to see though.

also there was a huge lake of pennies by the tree, so many pennies. i hate pennies when they are in my pocket or wallet or purse but they looked cool here. i read in the paper that there were over 10,000,000 pennies collected for charity.
then we went to times square and looked around. there is much to see and such good people watching.
then we headed back to jersey. while we were waiting for the shuttle from the hotel, ben decided he wanted to look like an old russian woman. endearing.
after a nice night's sleep, we rode the train in to the city again and we went to see cirque du soleil at madison square garden. here is mark sitting dejectedly on the stairs of the garden.

here is the smith family
i waited here for a miracle, none occurred.
and here we are so happy that we came to NYC. what a fun trip.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas.

christmas decorations and snow??!! what more could a girl want?

thanks give revisited

so i got the rest of my thanksgiving pictures to upload and since i am OCD and want things in order, they are going up now before i post about more recent things. so here are some more pictorials of the other guests that made it to thanksgiving and other happenings.
annie came
so did maryann and kelli and cathie (annie's sister from boston)
amber. doesn't she look pretty?
the boys: ben h., dave, ben smith, jeremy and mark.
and crazy eyed brian came at the end. he normally doesn't look this crazy but i think he was hungry. now i feel better that thanksgiving is all posted about. onto more things...

h.e.l.p

how the h do i make my blog have a cute header. i would love some input or someone just to make me one. the end.

phew

this shouldn't surprise you but i know you are all dying to know about my weekend. well, i am here to keep you up to date but i am going to need your help this blog. you are going to have to use your imaginations this time. many of you know that mark has been preparing to take the lsat for quite some time (you know this because i whine about it incessantly). well saturday was the big day. so in order to prepare him for the big test, we went looking for the location of the test and then we had some korean bbq. i thought of adriane the whole time so these pictures are for her. ade, there was bulgogi (gogi)!! also, we went with mark's old boss who once made me sing karaoke. blech.
okay, now here is where your imaginations is going to have to come into play. i have no more pictures. i have seriously been slacking. okay so on friday, mark studied for a while and then we watched hairspray (insert picture of me grinning excitedly and mark looking skeptical.) it was super cheesy but i liked it. we had to stop it early so mark could go to bed at 9:30 for the big test (insert picture of mark yawning and me rolling my eyes.) so on saturday, i ran various errands with ben and joy and kelli and then mark was done!! much earlier than expected so we got to hang out with out the pressure of the lsat hanging over us. it was pure delight. we watched shrek the third (obviously our movie choices were a bit off this week). after our movie, we got to go the party of the year. it was jenica's party and it was a bacon, cheese and chocolate party.those are jenica's favorite foods. shelley was of course the one to combine all ingredients for a tasty treat (insert picture of shelley holding her muffins up in the air in triumph). there was good bacony food all night and we ate until we were stuffed. then we played games and laughed a lot. it was a good night. hooray for no more lsat tests and classes! (insert picture of me doing a jubilant leap in the air.) sorry for the lame post (insert picture of me looking ashamed.) better one next time, faithful readers (insert picture of me with a face resolved to be better.)